With a feather on my nose

v«<

M

WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

With a Feather on My Nose

by

BILLIE BURKE
With Cameron Shipp

Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.
New York

Copyright. 1949. by
BILLIE BURKE and CAMERON SHIPP

All rights reserved. This book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any
form without permission of the publisher.

Copyright. 194S. by Cro well- Collier Publishing Co.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To Patricia

and

George Cukor

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

page

1 The Clown's Daughter

1

2 Mother Was Ambitious

14

3 The Canoe Song

26

4 Sir Charles Hawtrey

34

5 Gad! Said Uncle Jack

48

6 C. F.

57

7 Buttons and Bows

68

8 All That Glitters

83

9 Caruso— Barrdz— Maugham

101

10 The Man at the Foot of the Stairs

114

11 Prelude to Fantasia

134

12 The Golden Helmet

146

13 The First Year

161

14 Menagerle

177

15 Follies of 1918

194

16 High Stakes

207

17 The Crash

220

18 Good Night, Sweet Prince

238

19 And Now . . .

247

Appendix

261

Index

269

ILLUSTRATIONS

facing page

Billy Burke, from a painting by Benton Scott 20

Blanche Beatty Burke 21

Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. and Sandow 21
Sir Charles Hawtrey and Billie Burke in Mr.

George 52

Early motoring days in Regent's Park, London 53

In Mrs. Ponderburys Past 84

Charles Frohman 85

With John Drew in My Wife 116

Mark Twain 117
Somerset Maugham, from a painting by Gerald

Kelly, R.A. 148

Portrait of Miss Burke by S. de Ivanowski 149

In Noel Coward's The Marquise 180
In The Young in Heart, with Roland Young,

Janet Gaynor and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. 181

With Will Rogers in The Torchbearers 212
Broadcasting with John Barrymore and Rudy

Vallee 213

The Ziegfelds at Burkely Crest, 1923 244

Patricia, with her children 245

WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

1. THE CLOWN'S DAUGHTER

I could hear John Drew harrumphing through his
dressing-room door at the Empire Theater, giving
forth with those highly bred horsy noises which the
Drew-Barrvmore clan have so aristocratically made
their own hallmark.

I stood outside, in my new leghorn hat with the
lilacs on it, with my hair fluffed out behind, and my
little lilac checked dress. With me was my new
friend, Mr. Drew's niece Ethel Barrymore, who had
been sent to soothe the great man over the embar-
rassment of meeting a new leading lady with the
impossible— absolutely unheard-of!— name of Billie
Burke.

I have always been called Billie Burke, except for
those eighteen improbable, glittering years when I
was also Mrs. Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. I find it a per-
fectly adequate name. It's an especially nice name
for the skitter-witted ladies I play on the screen to-
day, and it suits me too because I might as well
confess here and now that I am not always saner
than I seem.

We could hear Mr. Drew through the dressing-
room door, as I was saying, and among his mutter-
ings was the complaint that Charles Frohman would
do anytxiing so dreadful, absurd, and outrageous to

1

2 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

him as give him a new leading lady named Billie
Burke. A chorus girl name. Bound to be a bouncing
British blonde with buck teeth.

Ethel grinned at me and I grinned back, uncon-
cerned. Why, it didn't mean a thing. I was only
twenty-one. I had come over from London to play
a season in the provinces. I was fluffing my hair and
preparing a theatrical smile for Mr. Drew when
Ethel suddenly threw open the door.

"Uncle Jack," she said in that wonderful throaty
voice of hers, "Uncle Jack, here is the little girl you
are afraid of!"

Uncle Jack turned and fixed me with his famous
glare. I believe it is a fact that the Drews and the
Barry mores were born with built-in glares and sound
effects, which they can switch on and off, like the
Signal Corps. Mr. Drew glared. Then he opened his
eyes wide. He said, "Why, come here, my dear child."
And that was that, and that was how I started being
an actress in New York.

I thought I had better explain about my name in
the beginning because so many persons have asked
me how I got it. Let me introduce myself properly:
my whole name is Mary William Ethelbert Appleton
Burke, I was born a few years ago, I have been an
actress for quite a while, since Edward VII was
King of England, and how do you do?

I acquired my full name, which certainly sounds
as if it ought to wear a lorgnette, through a bit of
ecclesiastical connivance with a British curate when
I was twelve years old. This was the Rev. Samuel

THE CLOWNS DAUGHTER 6

Kirshbaum, rector of St. Margaret's, Westminster
Abbey. He was a kind man and also a dazzlingly
handsome man so naturally I wanted to please him.
I told him the story of my father, who was a clown
with Barnum & Bailey's circus. His name was Billy
Burke.

Billy Burke was a handsome clown. I am tempted
to say a "pretty" clown, because he had a round,
open, generous face with sparkling blue eyes, always
shining, and beautiful bright red hair. He did not
wear tramp clothes or make himself up to look ridic-
ulous. Instead, he was impeccably costumed in white
with a gorgeous white ruff around his neck, a chalk-
white face, and a widely smiling pink mouth. Billy
Burke was a singing clown. He sang in a strong, high
baritone such songs as "Brannigan's Band," "Dance
with the Girl with the Hole in Her Stocking," "Paddy
Duffy's Cart," and "Clara Nolan's Ball," and when he
sang the trapeze artists sat carefully listening on
their wires, the roustabouts gathered around the
ring, and the brass band muted its harsh blare. And
oh! how the girls listened to that man sing! He had
the same effect that Sinatra and Bing Crosby have
on the impressionable female today, and he was ever
so much prettier.

My father was born in Knox County, Ohio, in 1844.
When the first Burkes came to America I am not
sure, but I gathered from Billy— who always lived
exuberantly in the present and seldom discussed the
past— that they came over from Ireland very early.
I am certain they were not wealthy, and until my

4 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

father came along, I doubt if they were distinguished.

Billy Burke first set out to be a chemist. I do not
suppose he got very far with his scientific career for
I find by consulting the records that he enlisted in
the Union Army on August 11, 1862, as a drummer.
He was eighteen years old at that time.

I also find that he fought in the Battle of Chicka-
saw Bayou, but although I bedeviled him as a child
with that classic demand: "Tell me about when you
were a boy, Daddy/' he seldom mentioned the Civil
War, and he told me no stories about it. Possibly he
disapproved of it. Possibly he wished to avoid of-
fending my mother, whose people fought on the
Confederate side. But more than likely Billy skipped
the whole thing because he could not remember any-
thing amusing about a war. He was discharged in St.
Louis on April 4, 1863, on a surgeon's certificate of
disability, but as to that I know nothing at all. He
never sat around like an old soldier predicting the
weather by aches in his wounds.

At any rate, I do know that the study of chem-
istry palled on my father, and that his extrovert
nature responded to the bravura of being a drummer
boy. As a little girl, I used to imagine him bravely
leading the Boys in Blue into battle, sounding a com-
mand to "Charge!" on orders from General Grant
himself, and I always imagined him being killed in
action, still bravely thumping his drum. How he
could have perished almost thirty years before I was
born was a question I never examined closely.

Billy Burke's hero was not a soldier but a clown

THE CLOWNS DAUGHTER 5

named Dan Rice, who died at about the turn of the
century, a derelict. Dan Rice was the most cele-
brated circus entertainer of his day. Probably he was
the greatest clown that ever lived. He was accus-
tomed to making, or losing, more than $100,000 a
year as a circus owner, and as a performer his salary
was $35,000. He started as a jockey, became a profes-
sional strong man, and wound up as a clown, a
Shakespearian jester who would exchange witticisms
with the audience and answer any questions with
apt quotations from the Old Bard of Avon.

Dan Rice undoubtedly made an enormous impres-
sion on my father. To some extent, he modeled his
clowning after him, and the habit of quoting Shake-
speare followed him all his life. I doubt if Billy Burke
ever excused himself to run down to the tobacco
shop without a vaunting in Elizabethan terms. Once
I heard him astonish a real-estate man with a noble
recitation from Julius Caesar, Act III, beginning "See
what a rent the envious Casca made," and on another
occasion, when my express wagon overturned as he
pulled me down a London side street, the neighbor-
hood was treated to:

"O! what a fall there, was, my countrymen;
Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourish'd over us."

It is quite possible that Charles Chaplin and others
can quote a few lines from the classics, but I suggest
as an understatement that few of our entertainers
today are either pundits or poets.

6 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

There were some special clowns in my father's
day, and I want to say a word about them. I do not
mean the ordinary, run-of-the-circus Joey, the red-
nosed, pantalooned tramps who scamper around the
ring as a stopgap between numbers. In the seventies
and the eighties and, indeed, for some time after
that, clowns were the aristocrats of the circus. And
the creme de la creme of the clowns were the singing
clowns, the talented artists like Tony Pastor, Al
Miaco, and Billy Burke.

Circuses in those days were one-ring circuses, not
the vast affairs we know now, and audiences under
canvas never surpassed four thousand persons. Thus
there was an opportunity for wit and pantomime to
have full play, and Billy Burke's voice, which was
clear and big, could fill the entire tent and then some.

Clowns, I have heard, owe their origin to the
religious plays of the Fourteenth Century when rov-
ing troupes of players, like the famous Lupinos, Ida
Lupino's direct ancestors, used to travel Europe; the
clowns of today spring from the Devils in those
plays. At least, that is what Billy Burke thought, al-
though more precise historians may trace the an-
cestry of clowns much farther back than that.

I suppose it is only because circuses have become
so large that the great pantomimists and singing
clowns are no more; but even so their traditions
remain. A beginning clown is still a "First of May,"
and becomes a "Johnny Come Lately" in his second
year. If he hopes for a permanent place in the

THE CLOWNS DAUGHTER

hierarchy, he must eventually become a Producing
Clown, with his own props and scenery.

When I was a big girl of thirteen or fourteen, troup-
ing with my parents through Europe, the clown that
impressed me the most was a truly astonishing gentle-
man with the Babusios troupe who could make water
squirt six feet high from his skull. In Moscow, where
Billy Burke took his act to play in an enormous park,
the great clown was Durow, who was with the State
Circus and whose acid remarks from the ring were
so effective that he could actually drive office holders
from the government. Perhaps they need a Comrade
Durow in Moscow today. I wonder what became of
him.

And what became of William Olschansky, who
jested in eleven languages, or of a japester named
Sherwood? This Sherwood once pranced across the
ring in all his paint and foolishness, made a low and
comic bow, and reached up graciously to permit
Queen Victoria to shake his hand. P. T. Barnum was
near apoplexy, but Victoria was amused and had to
retire to control her laughter.

Billy Burke was one of these international clowns
who could play in any country in any language. So
far as I know, he never bothered his head at any
time in his life to study German, French, or Spanish
or Italian, but on stage he seemed perfectly at home
in them. Perhaps like the late great Otis Skinner,
who purported to speak all languages and actually
spoke only English— but that magnificently— Billy
was merely adept at making foreign noises. But the

8 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

people seemed to understand clowns in any language.
It was the custom to play Paris in the spring, Ger-
many in the summer, Russia in the autumn, and
London in the winter.

Billy came to Pittsburgh with P. T. Barnum in
1883 and sang his funny songs. I am told that he
was witty and clever with satirical pantomime. All
the girls thought he was perfectly wonderful and he
was invited to many parties. One of the young wo-
men who was smitten by Billy was a widow named
Blanche Hodkinson from New Orleans, who had four
children by her first marriage and who, as I remem-
ber so well, had a very firm chin and inelastic will
power.

She was a small person with a charming, lithe
body, beautiful white skin, silky chestnut hair, green
eyes with straight, black eyebrows, and an unmistak-
ably haughty mien. Indeed, she had a Look— an
imperious Look which matched her patrician face,
and which was hers by every right of inheritance:
Blanche came from a proud New Orleans family, the
Beattys, who had great wealth before the Civil War.

She was in her early forties at this time. Her chil-
dren by her early first marriage were grown. Blanche
was working in the Treasury Department in Wash-
ington and had come to Pittsburgh to visit friends.

And so it was a surprise, this love affair between
Mrs. Hodkinson and the singing clown. I know little
about their actual courtship except that they met at
a party given for Mr. J. A. Bailey, P. T. Barnum's

THE CLOWN'S DAUGHTER 9

partner; when the circus left town, Blanche was Mrs.
Billy Burke.

Marrying a clown was, of course, an astonishing
idea both to the Hodkinsons and to the Beattys. It
was a very long time before they cautiously accepted
him into the family, and even then they invariably
addressed him as "Mr. Burke."

They went on tour with the circus, first to New
Orleans, where Billy was cooly "Mister Burked" by
the Beatty cousins and uncles, and then turned East
where, in a few months, it became apparent that it
would not be wise for Blanche to continue traveling
with a circus.

We still have the telegram Billy Burke, who was
on tour, sent the day I was born. He wired to my
mother: i don't care whether it's a boy or a girl,

BUT DOES IT HAVE RED HADR?

Mr. Bailey, who adored my father, was almost as
excited as his chief clown. He wired from New York:

I WELL MAKE YOU A FTRM OFFER OF ONE MILLION DOL-
LARS cash for the baby. One of my earliest memories
is of Mr. Bailey's catching me up in his arms, tickling
my nose with his great red beard, and calling me
"Little Billie."

During the next eight years we were in Wash-
ington and New York, Mother and I, with Billy
Burke traveling most of the time. We frequently
went to Washington for long visits with my grand-
mother, a most remarkable old lady, whose traditions
were far removed from sawdust and tanbark. This
was Mother's mother, Mrs. Cecelia Flood Beatty,

10 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

who had been a great beauty in New Orleans, a lady
whose lively interest in the present never obscured
her appreciation for tradition. Grandmother Beatty
was, at that, a considerable paradox.

In the days before the war (always the War
Between the States, if you please) when she was the
young mistress of a great plantation, she had ordered
her fine clothes, her writing paper, her perfumes, her
linens and her elegant gloves from France as a mat-
ter of course. She maintained her box at the opera
and lived in that atmosphere of ease and noblesse
oblige peculiar to the Louisiana and Mississippi cot-
ton planters, a gracious and feudal kind of culture
which, I suppose, has never been precisely matched
anywhere else in this country.

On Christmas day it was the habit of her husband's
brother to send Mrs. Beatty a pair of matched slaves
with his greetings— and here's the paradox: Grand-
mother always instantly manumitted them, set them
free, and immediately set about writing another
torrent of letters to the press denouncing the whole
institution of slavery. She wrote both in prose and
in verse and was one of the first supporters of Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe.

In her old age, when I knew her briefly as a child,
she was a bright and busy little woman who seemed
to have read everything, who had an obsession for
seeing that small girls pronounced the English lan-
guage immaculately, and whose interest in public
affairs was so intense that she would sit for long
hours in the gallery of the Senate taking notes on the

THE CLOWNS DAUGHTER 11

debates of the day. She was also rather sarcastic.
Once, when a convention of politicos came to Wash-
ington, she arched her nose (never mind that; there
are people who can arch their noses ) and proclaimed
that "They came with one shirt and a dollar and
never changed either for two weeks/'

Part of the time during this period, up to the time
I was eight years old, Billy Burke was touring the
country with his own circus, a small affair, but the
crowds and the girls stayed away and the enterprise
folded. I remember vaguely that we had frugal days
in New York, that my father worked small-time
engagements, and then, with incorrigible optimism,
organized a new troupe and headed for London. I
was eight years old then.

I recall that we sailed second class, not very
grandly, that it was bitterly cold, that I wore little
red mittens, and that for the entire voyage I was
miserably seasick. I arrived in London a bedraggled
mite, shivering, disgusted, and vastly disappointed by
the British; I had dreamed of Kings and Queens and
Princelings, of glitter and panoply, and instead, there
was merely the - chill smudge of Waterloo Station
and the crisp cackle of Cockney voices.

But we were a Success. That is to say, Billy was.
Of course, Mother was always a Success because she
was that kind of a woman. She was a managing type;
everything she did and said was predicated on the
hypothesis that, if arrangements were only left to
her, everything would naturally turn out all right.

Billy's entertainment was called Billy Burkes

12 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Barnum &■ Great London Circus Songsters. It was
billed as "Containing a Collection of the Latest and
Best Songs of the Day as Sung by America's Greatest
Clown with a Vast Collection Set to Music Expressly
for this Work," but it did not last long. Billy was soon
playing the music halls, singing his songs. I think he
did pretty well, but he was never a star.

It was during this period, when we had diggings
on Kensington Road in one of those dreary London
flats in which the landlady fetches your mutton on a
tray and your bath in a bucket, that I met the Rev.
Mr. Kirshbaum at St. Margaret's. What with traipsing
around the United States after the circus and moving
to London, my religious education had been ne-
glected. I had not been baptized or even officially
named. I told the handsome curate that I wanted to
be named "Billie," for my famous father.

There are so many things I like about the British.
Most of all, I think, I admire their sense of humor. A
Britisher will underplay you always, dead pan as
a stage butler, but laughing inside all the time. The
Rev. Mr. Kirshbaum, who must indeed have been
astonished already by the improbable child that I
surely was, with gilt-red hair swirling around my
shoulders and my little piping voice, accepted me
and my request blandly. I explained that I was afraid
of going through life as "Ethelbert," or "Bertha," or
"Thelbert," all of which I thought were absurd names
for a red-headed child, and couldn't I please be
called "Billie" after my father?

The Rev. Mr. Kirshbaum put his tongue in his

THE CLOWN'S DAUGHTER 13

cheek and asked me for all the names in my family. I
told him. Then he said, "6ut won't you be named
'Mary/ just for me?" Why, I was delighted, of course.
I would have been named Gorgonzola, just for him.
And that is how the name of Mary William Ethelbert
Appleton Burke is registered at Westminster Abbey,
solemnly attested by the Bishop of London. I wish
John Drew had known all that.

2. MOTHER WAS AMBITIOUS

Iondon was cold and harsh in winter. Trying to
j make your way through the fog was like pawing
through hanging damp blankets. But ah! when June
came, when the hedgerows were green in the sub-
urbs, when the boys and girls punted on the Thames,
when Piccadilly and Kensington Gardens blossomed
with flowers and nursemaids, and those frabjous, pink-
cheeked, clear-eyed British girls! There is something
about fetching up a girl in a fog, scrubbing her in a
tin tub, and feeding her on mutton. It makes her
beautiful.

We walked in Chelsea on Sundays, looking at the
big houses. I remember that Billy Burke said that
this was the section of London where everybody
lived and nobody was ever born. He said even the
dogs barked with a British accent. I snubbed my
nose on the windows of the smart shops in Mayfair,
followed the lamplighters around as dusk fell, lis-
tened nightly for the crashing peal of the great bells
of St. Paul's, where I was later confirmed. There
were no planes overhead in those days to frighten
a London child, not even an automobile to run her
down.

In the evenings sometimes, or on holidays, Billy

14

MOTHER WAS AMBITIOUS 15

Burke would take me on his knee in his great swivel
chair and we would gyrate wildly around, singing
"Paddy Duffy's Cart" at the tops of our voices. He
told me endless stories, made little jokes, and mim-
icked all the great figures of the day. I know now
that I owe him a great deal. It was all fun and
clowning, but unconsciously I was learning how to
make people laugh.

I went to the Misses Baillie's School where I
struggled to pin my fanciful mind down to a little
learning. In mathematics I was the dullard of the
world, totally bereft of the commercial viewpoint
which can figure out how to paper a room at so
much per yard. In music I did fairly well, but my
music lessons were terrifying experiences. Our school-
rooms were invariably as cold as dungeon cells. To
keep warm, my teacher wore fingerless mittens. But
out of one of these mittens protruded an instrument
of torture, a cold, raw, red finger, long and bony,
which she used as if it were a club to batten down
my small and trembling fingers whenever I hit a
wrong note. I played with one eye on the keyboard
and one on the finger, which direly hovered over
me, ready to smite.

All of the rooms at that school were chilly. Also,
we never seemed to have enough to eat. Often, we
would fill up with prunes and drink water to achieve
a satisfactory sense of fullness. I suppose, though,
that we were as well off as most school children in
Great Britain. The English are not only long on
fundamental book larnin' but dedicated to the propo-

16 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

sition that the small character is better formed if it
endures a certain amount of Spartan discomfort.

Sometimes I went back stage on Friday nights to
see Father work with a comedy mule. It seems very
curious to me now, but I was never stage-struck.
Not in the least. I was not even interested as a child
in going to the theater. I was a shy, wistful sort of
moppet who never in this world would have got
ahead if it had not been for my mother.

She decided that I was going to be an actress.
Now, Mother had no theatrical background whatso-
ever. She paid little attention to the circus or to the
stage when Father was working. I showed abso-
lutely no precocity or talent— except, perhaps, for a
trick of mimicry which I inherited from my father.
But this determined woman decided that I was go-
ing to be a great actress. Or a great opera star. Or
a famous dancer.

It distressed Billy Burke. I remember that I hud-
dled on the sofa, frightened and whimpering while
they quarreled about whether I should become a
celebrated actress or not.

"She doesn't want to, she hates it, she is shy and
retiring, you will ruin her," Billy Burke argued. But
my mother stuck out her firm, small chin and an-
nounced firmly that I was going to become a star.
She wasn't sure what kind. Apparently, it made small
difference to her. As for my father's objections, she
treated him precisely as she always treated me— as
a child.

It occurs to me that someone ought to do a piece

MOTHER WAS AMBITIOUS 17

of scholarly research on the number of girls who
have become stage and movie stars because their
mothers pushed them. Often this is the result of a
broken home, with an ambitious mother shoving a
daughter into the career she herself always wanted.
Even more often it is the cause of broken homes.
But that is another story.

Trying to inspire me, Mother dragged me to see
Ellen Terry and Sir Henry Irving act in a great pro-
duction of Robespierre. I was as apathetic as a cab-
bage. And I dreaded the notion of getting up on a
stage and speaking a piece.

Oh, some fantastic things have happened to me,
some amusing things, glamorous things, happy
things— mostly happy things. And some sad and tragic
things— very tragic things— but I might as well face
it. Even today I am the clinging vine type. I'm not
an enterprising woman. I enjotj clinging.

But to school I went, to learn how to act. I had a
sympathetic singing teacher, Madame Louise Dauste
de Fortis, who called me "an enchanting little per-
son" and offered to finance half the expense if Mother
would send me to Italy to study for opera. But by
this time Mother wanted quicker action, so my grand
opera career was tossed overboard. Possibly Mother
had a definite goal. If she did, she never divulged it.
I studied elocution from Rosina Philippi, ballet
dancing from Professor D'Aubin, who finally dis-
carded me because I never could get up on my
toes. He was very sweet and never made love to me.

Yes, I began to experience that kind of thing

18 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

early. I suppose my mother saw it— that most men
are impelled to reach for a red-headed girl if she is
reasonably pretty, and shy to boot; and I suppose
she set about capitalizing this thing by turning my
feet toward the stage. I have no false modesty about
it; a good many men have reached for me from time
to time. Some didn't when I hoped they would.

At any rate, I crossed London by bus in those
days to take my lessons, with dank, muddy straw up
to my knees in the horse-drawn vehicles, bumping
along sadly to learn how to be an actress. Sometimes
I went by cab when we were flush. The hansom
cabs were wonderful, and the bus drivers were the
comedians of the world. They had their lap robes,
flowers in their buttonholes, and held their whips
like scepters, condescending to the multitudes. I re-
call one old fellow who often drove me. On one of
the rare, sunny days when I could sit on top, he
yelled an especially gay greeting to a confrere, loop-
ing his long whip into a noose and waving it at him.

"Do it to cheer 'im up," he chortled, leering at me.
"You see th' noose? Is brother was 'anged the other
dye. Cheers 'im up, y'know." And he would grin at
his friend and waggle the noose.

My formal education, such as it was, was con-
stantly interrupted by tours. We went to France,
Germany, Austria, and Russia. Billy was quite suc-
cessful, an elegant with a flower in his buttonhole,
his merry blue eyes sparkling. The year we were
most prosperous he bought Mother a sealskin coat
and himself his first Prince Albert and top hat—

MOTHER WAS AMBITIOUS 19

which he wore with the careless eclat of one who
had been accustomed to them all his life.

Mother, who managed both my father and me as
if we were delinquents likely to drop a bomb or
squander the family fortune if we were not con-
stantly supervised, made us travel with dozens of
wicker baskets, which were our luggage, for she
liked our own things around us whenever possible.

As soon as we had registered at a continental hotel,
Billy Burke and I fled as fast as possible. It was my
mother's habit to tie a cloth around her head and
scrub every piece of woodwork in our quarters, and
shake and air out the elephant-sized puffs, dusting
and cleaning our rooms with concentrated fervor
before we were allowed to occupy them. She in-
sisted upon good hotels for the sake of prestige, but
we got our own breakfast, often sallying forth at in-
credible hours of the morning to reach the markets
early to buy coeur de fromage, and little rolls while
they were fresh and warm.

I doubt if there is a museum in all Europe that I
did not doze in during my adolescence. I was dragged
to all of them, and I stared with dull eyes at centuries
of history and of art. A Florentine tapestry was a
rug hung on a wall to me, a painting was nothing
unless it told a story, and statuary always seemed so
embarrassingly naked and cold.

I would have you know, of course, that I am an
extremely sensitive and artistic person today, but the
plain truth is that in my childhood the great treasures
of Europe bored me to tears— as I suspect they bore

20 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

most children as they are dragged through museums
with their warm little fists in their parents' hands
and their cold legs hurting.

Often, I wandered about moldy cathedrals or
napped in a drafty corner while Billy Burke sketched.
I am under the impression that he was quite good
with quick charcoal drawings, but unfortunately his
clown's-eye views of Europe were not preserved.

On one occasion when it was necessary for Father
to travel all over Europe, Mother went with him and
left me for almost two years to continue my educa-
tion in London. I stayed at the home of the Beatty
Kingstons. Mr. Kingston had been music critic of
the London Times, and it was in this home that I
had my first real introduction to British family life.
There is a thing about the English that people of
no other nationality seem able to manage, and it is
this: the British set the most formal standards for
their living but themselves are able to toss them
aside and achieve a mixture of formality and laissez
faire which baffles and bewilders everybody else.

Mrs. Kingston, who was a large, auburn-haired
lady, ran her household as if she were conducting a
salon, and her butler was as distinguished as a major
general on parade. But she sat regularly at table with
an enormous fat pug dog under her arm, and the
two daughters each had a dog, a French poodle and
a little white scampering dog of some undistinguished
breed, who also ate with us. At teatime, moment of
high ceremony in any British home, each dog was
served a saucer of milk by the butler, who fetched

Faxon

My father. Billy Burke, in his clown costume, from a painting
by Benton Scott

r^

g

>^

CD -m

■% 5

Z ^

3^

a <v

MOTHER WAS AMBITIOUS 21

their refreshments with a high-nosed look of disgust,
as if he smelled a sour apple.

There was also in this menage a large parrot which
used to screech at the son of the house, who was an
oversized grown man with a vast, blossomy red
mustache: "Boysie! Boysie! Good morning, Boysie!"
Whereupon Boysie would swear expertly at the bird
and throw muffins at it.

The Kingston house was enormous, with two pianos
in the drawing room, one bearing a little silver plaque
announcing that it had been played on by Liszt. I
recall that a lady with a magnificent silver voice
came often to sing for the Kingstons and their guests.
I seem to have taken it as a matter of course that her
name was Adelina Patti.

At another time I lived for a long while at the
home of the Theodore Roussels, who were in some
way related to Dickens. Mr. Roussel was a student
of Whistlers, and when I knew him, an artist of
great distinction. He was one of the pioneers in the
technique of copperpoint, which was new at that
time. This family lived in a charming Adams house
which had been designed for a king's mistress. It had
beautiful gardens and a mysterious, shadowy studio,
and the Roussels had beautiful afternoon parties
there. They took me often to previews of pictures
destined for the annual shows at the Royal Academy.
These were lively, gay affairs attended by people
who could paint pictures and people who could buy
them.

Through the Roussels I was introduced to many

22 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

of the leading artists in London then, and more than
a dozen of them painted pictures of me— chiefly be-
cause of my red hair, which was abundant and hung
to my waist. Sad to say, for me, none of those pic-
tures so far as I know became famous and I do not
know today whatever became of them. Surely there
must be at least several very red-headed Billie Burkes
somewhere in London today.

My education, as I have been trying to indicate,
was not always formal, but it was highly varied. I
had a quick ear. Through my music lessons and
through travel, I picked up French and spoke it
glibly, as, indeed, did almost everyone else I knew.
I did not learn the quantum theory or much about
physics, but so far that handicap has not alarmed
me. And nowhere, to this day, have I encountered
a better mind than my mother's.

She introduced me to good books by reading to
me when I was small. We had, of course, all of
Dickens, Scott, and Thackeray, the standards of that
era; and Tennyson, Keats, Shelley and Byron by the
yard. As for Shakespeare, we never needed to study
him. There was never a day of my early life that
Billy Burke did not quote him, usually with gestures.

My mother was a many-sided woman who, I am
sure, might have accomplished a great deal on her
own if it had not been nearly impossible for women
to have careers in those days. Sometimes I think that
mothers who want their daughters to be actresses
are merely carrying out a wish fulfillment, but in my

MOTHER WAS AMBITIOUS 23

mother's instance I am not sure it was as simple as
that. I suspect that she pushed me toward the stage
because she saw in it then the only possible oppor-
tunity for a woman to distinguish herself.

Possibly I have drawn a little too hard a picture
of her. She was firm but not domineering. She was
imperious at times— most of the time— but she was
gracious. And she was certainly romantic, else she
could not have run away with a clown. Also, she was
enormously fetched and delighted by British pomp
and ceremony, a sure sign of sentimentality.

Mother often railed against what she considered
the shabby manner in which American presidents
were inaugurated. She compared our businesslike
arrangements for inducting a head of state with the
pageantry of English coronations and felt that Amer-
ica suffered by comparison. One of her favorite
remarks in this connection was: "God deliver me
from Jeffersonian simplicity!,,

In the summers, when my parents were with me,
we would often go up to Westgate for a little holiday,
and here, I think, is something that may surprise you:
one-piece bathing suits were no novelty in 1900. The
beach was coveted with sharp pebbles, as all English
beaches are. In order to reach the water, which was
always icy cold, it was necessary to hire one of the
little horse-drawn carts and be pulled across the
beach out into the water. You then descended from
the privacy of your cart directly into the ocean.

Actually, you could have swum in your birthday
suit. There were some modest ladies who wore stock-

24 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

ings and long, billowy bathing gowns, and the gen-
tlemen donned long, wretched-looking pants known
as "sea drawers," but the rest of us were skimpily
one-pieced.

As I say, at this time, when I was thirteen and
fourteen years old, going on the stage was the last
ambition I had. As a matter of fact, I cannot recall
that I had any ambition. I was a docile child who
did as she was told, taking piano lessons in the Italian
method and singing lessons in French and Italian,
elocution, fencing and all that— all part of a scheme
of my mother's to make me an actress. But I never
dreamed of being a great lady on the stage, or of
being an opera star. The dream was entirely my
mother's.

My first opportunity to be an actress on the stage
came when Mother wangled me a chance to sing
some little songs— "coon songs," they were called
then— at Birkenhead. I was fourteen. I did a few
poor little imitations, sang my ditties in a dejected
chirp, and tottered to the wings. My first audience
hooted at me. "Let's 'ave it a little louder, dearie!"
they called. It was so awful and scary.

I didn't cry. I didn't brood about it. I was simply
frightened and glad to get out of it. But my indomi-
table mother took me in hand, taught me the next
afternoon to put my songs over with full voice (my
voice was always small) and made me go on again.

I wish I could report that my first real taste of
theatrical success, a full burst of approval, inspired
me to reach for the heights. It didn't. I was merely

MOTHER WAS AMBITIOUS 25

a willing little girl, not so badly scared now, doing
what her mother told her. I did not want to be an
actress, even when the audiences applauded and
called me back for bows and encores.

3. THE CANOE SONG

My next engagement was in Sheffield at some
forgotten drafty theater where all I had to do
was lie on a rock with my red hair carefully arranged
to look careless. The act was billed as "The Sleeping
Beauty and the Yellow Dwarf" and I was no con-
tribution to the drama.

Then I worked at the London Pavilion for ten
pounds a week. I cannot imagine at what cost of
beseeching, promising or threatening my astute
mother got me this engagement, but this time I sang
my small songs with confidence and had enough
sense to smile at the audience. Indeed, I was getting
a little mischievous, learning to flirt with the people,
now that my terrors were gone. It was a lucky thing.

Leslie Stewart, who had done the great and be-
loved Floradora, which opened in London and was
an enormous success in New York— remember "The
Floradora Girls"?— was writing a new show, The
School Girl, and he sent word that he had a small
part for me. My mother accepted before he could
catch his breath, although the salary this time was
only five pounds. Stewart took me to see George
Edwardes the producer, and immediately these two
began to mutter and to build up a mystery. It was

26

THE CANOE SONG 27

something about a song I was to sing, called "Mamie,
I Have a Little Canoe."

Charles Frohman, who was as celebrated in Lon-
don as he was in America, joined forces with George
Edwardes to produce The School Girl. This was, I
take it, largely because those famous beauties, Edna
May and Pauline Chase, were under contract to Froh-
man, while Marie Studholm, the English star, be-
longed to Edwardes. Violet Cameron, who had a
magnificent voice, was another Edwardes star, as was
George P. Huntley, one of the most popular come-
dians at that time.

I understood soon enough but I did not know at
the beginning why there was a mystery about my
little song in this production. Show-wise Frohman
and Edwardes knew, of course, that the "Canoe
Song" was unusual; the game was not to let either
Miss May or Miss Studholm know that the best song
in the show had been given to an unknown girl.

I was not allowed to sing it until the dress re-
hearsal. It was a simple but catchy tune, done with
pantomime, as if four of us younger girls were pad-
dling a canoe. Inexperienced show girl that I was,
I hadn't the slightest notion how it would affect the
Misses May and Studholm.

These sophisticated ones instantly recognized the
song for what it was— the hit tune of the production.
Both threatened to resign immediately, sulking in
their dressing rooms like offended queens. What
conniving went on back stage at the Prince of Wales
Theater, what cables popped across the Atlantic

28 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

between Frohman and his beloved star I never
learned, but there was a bitter controversy. Still,
Edwardes and Stewart won out and the show
opened the next night.

Do not tell me that the English are cold, im-
passive people. They roared their applause, stamped,
yelled, and whistled for the canoe song. It was like
a tidal shock smashing across the footlights after my
rather quiet number. I fled, forgetting to curtsy,
bumping into guy ropes, and fell gasping into the
arms of our stage manager, Pat Malone.

"They hate me!" I sobbed. "It's awful! What are
they doing?"

Pat grabbed me by the wrists and jerked me on
my feet like a doll.

"Get on stage. Sing it again," he ordered. I
gasped that I couldn't.

Pat took charge. "Stop it, you silly little redhead,"
he said. "Get out there before I slap you." He raised
his big hand and was about to do it, too, when I ran
back on stage. We discommoded that whole open-
ing night with bows and encores.

The School Girl ran for more than two years, and
to my astonishment and delight, and thanks to Pat
Malone, I was a celebrity. I remember my excite-
ment when I discovered that Ellis & Walery's, the
most fashionable photographers of the West End,
had their windows full of my pictures—and that they
were selling right along with those of Lady Ran-
dolph Churchill, Queen Alexandra, and the beauti-

THE CANOE SONG 29

ful actress Gertie Millar. I was eighteen years old
and the year was 1903.

That was the year in which the Wright brothers
made the first successful airplane flight from Kill
Devil Hill on the North Carolina seacoast, four
miles from Kitty Hawk. We marveled in London
that such things could be and freely predicted that
flying through the air was an absurd American no-
tion. The news out of America that interested us
most was the account of the Iroquois Theater dis-
aster in Chicago, five days after Christmas, in which
602 persons perished. That was theatrical news and
more like reality.

Instead of being called "Copper Knob," an earlier
nickname, I was now dubbed "The American Flap-
per." I have not consulted Mr. H. L. Mencken, but
I think this is the origin of the term flapper. Cer-
tainly, my red hair flapped, not by theatrical design
but because I was too lazy to fasten it up. I rather
liked it that way, too.

London was enchantment then, and I was deli-
ciously aware, too, that it was full of interesting Sin.
But during my first year in the business Mother came
to fetch me at the theater every night, and her
apron strings, to which I was firmly attached, were
exceedingly short. Still, with my little friend Polly,
who sang in the "Canoe Song" number with me, I
used to indulge in a vast amount of speculative and
technically incorrect chitchat. We told each other
risque stories, too, tittering and hiding our faces
behind our hands to build up the enormity of anec-

30 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

dotes we didn't half understand. Some of the fancy
goings-on we couldn't help but see.

Edna May's dressing room was a salon to which
many beaux and admirers reported. We would scut-
tle down from our quarters, which were attic-high,
and peep over the handrails to see what was going
on, and on occasion Miss May would catch us and
give us some of the candy her friends had brought.

All the beauties of the day were in The School
Girl. I remember Clarita Vidal, famous and smick-
smack, who posed as if she were made of wax, with
just one expression of sheer beauty. The Maharajah
of Cooch Behar came nightly through the fog in an
elegant electric brougham, with a cluster of jewels
on his great white turban and his hands full of
gems as he paid court to Edna May. He was hand-
some and suave, and reminded me somehow of a
leopard. The toffs of London stood at our stage door
and escorted my friends to the Savoy, to Romano's,
or the Cafe Royal for a hot bird and a cold bottle
and who knows what sophisticated revelry. But I
never saw it. I went home with Mother, wondering.

Sin in the theater, I can observe now, is compa-
rable to education in a university: it is there for those
who wish to take advantage of it, but fewer do than
you might suspect. Still, as I grew older, I popped
my eyes at a good deal of dalliance. I must say, now
that I can be as prim as I please, that it does not
seem to work out very well for girls. I will go so far
as to say flatly that I do not recommend it.

My love life when I was sixteen and seventeen

THE CANOE SONG 31

years old was nothing to write purple passages
about. I was spared most of the schoolgirl pangs and
passions for matinee idols, for I was always close to
the theater and took it as a matter of course. And I
did not then admire young men simply because they
happened to be good actors. My first real beau was
an Irish lad, an officer of the British Navy who had
a resounding title and an estate in Devonshire. I
am not being coyly mysterious about him, but be-
cause he is today a gentleman of some eminence in
the Empire, and a man of family, I think it might
be poor taste to name him.

Our love affair was fun. We laughed at the same
things. We went up the river to lunch at Skindles',
we rode horseback in the Row, we spent Sunday
evenings at the Savoy or the Carlton, and there were
many fine weekends for Mother and me at the place
in Devonshire.

On trips up the river by train,, it was our pleasure
to seize a compartment and to keep intruders out
of it by posturing and making alarming faces as if
we were dim-wits whose keeper might return at any
moment. The British suspicion of anything strange
always rose to the jape and would-be fellow passen-
gers retreated hastily. Riding in the park, we always
bowed elaborately to total strangers, who would
bow back, hastily, with blank expressions on their
faces while we laughed.

To tell the truth, so many of my beaux about that
time were such sweet boys that I actually hesitated,
tempted as I always was, to get engaged to them be-

32 WITH A FEATHER OX MY NOSE

cause there always arrived for me a moment of sad,
high romance in which I decided that it would be
wicked of me if I grew tired of them and ruined
their lives. I was quite sure that the life of any lad
who received the mitten from me would be irrev-
ocably blighted.

There was another rather special young man
about that time, shortly after The School Girl It is
fun to recall these tall voung men, and this was a
really tall one, a captain of the Tenth Hussars who
wore a busbv which £ave him a dashincr ajj ancl
emphasized his fine eves. Once when he was sta-
tioned at Hampton Court some of us attended a
tea in his quarters, and I was enchanted bv his ideas
of decoration: he had a shelf around the four walls
of his sitting room and even- inch of that shelf was
occupied bv a different picture of me. But then, I
fancy he changed this gallery from time to time,
depending upon his visitor.

In that era, the voung men were all in some land
of military service, there being, of course, no other
possible occupation for their class to take up. The
gavest blades bought their seats at the theater for
an entire season and occupied them only when their
favorite °irls were on sta°;e. It was no noveltv to
open the first act with great gaps in the audience,
like missing front teeth, then to have Standing Room
Only for the second.

You could always go to lunch with a young man,
but to supper with liim. after the theater, only if you
were verv sure of him. "We went to Prince's for

THE CANOE SONG 33

lunch, to the Carlton for supper, usually in the boys'
electric broughams. Always, in the evening, the
young men wore full dress. Anything else would
have been unthinkable. Always, when vou sot to
know a bov well, vou met his familv and were in-
vited to his countrv home for week ends.

Mv Devonshire friend was tall and blond. tvpi-
callv Irish-British. I might have married him. It *
a near thing. For some three years I never said I
wouldn't, but then I never quite said defmitelv that
I would, either. It would have been difficult, with
my career in mind. He was a Catholic, and though
his religion was not the only barrier in mv mind, it
was one of them.

His countrv home was a delightful place to 20.
but during the many weekends Mother and I spent
there I was always taken a little aback by the bath-
in z habits of the British nobility. There was one tub
which was lu££ed around from room to room, bv
appointment only, bv maid servants who poured
meager buckets of tepid water into it while vou
shivered in a dwindling glow from a small fireplace.
Even to this day. considering their cavalier attitude
about plumbing:. I think it is a grand compliment to
the English people that thev bathe at all.

More than likelv the story is apocryphal, but I
am told that when Adele Astaire married Lord
Charles .Arthur Francis Cavendish, son of the Ehike
and Duchess of Devonshire, she was taken to live
in a castle with two hundred rooms— and one bath.

4. SIR CHARLES HAWTREY

It was while I was working in The School Girl that
I became aware of some of my possibilities and
some of my limitations.

I knew by then that I could never become an
opera star, or even a musical comedy star, in spite
of Mother's vaulting ambitions. My voice was not
large enough. I looked enviously at Alexandra Car-
lisle, a beauty who played light comedy, the kind
of warm and human thing that Kit Cornell was to
do a few years later. I went to Leslie Stewart and
he encouraged me, but he had no new play in which
I might have a chance.

Most successful comedians of that day eventually
went into pantomime, always called "pantos" by the
British, a form of entertainment unknown in Amer-
ica. There were several pantomime companies always
playing in London, and each big city, such as Liver-
pool and Manchester, had its own company. The
plots of these productions were highly stylized, as
I recall, with the leading comedian generally play-
ing the hilarious part of an old woman, with a young
girl in tights as a boy. The new songs of the day
were often introduced in pantomime, the shows
were always suitable for children, so that whole
families used to attend, and the pay was therefore

34

SIR CHARLES HAWTREY 35

excellent. I was offered pantomime but I knew it
was not for me. Watching Alexandra Carlisle con-
vinced me that the one thing in the world I wanted
to do more than anything else was straight comedy.

Meantime, while I fretted, my best friend Polly
and I were enormously wicked in The School Girl.
We used to take orange peels, slice them into cres-
cents to represent teeth, and when our chance came,
turn our backs to the audience, stick them in our
mouths and grin foolishly at Edna May while she
sang her song. Also for sheer cussedness, we would
step out of our shoes during a number and leave
them on stage for other players to trip over. Miss
May complained sweetly but ineffectively. Pat
Malone would grin and threaten to suspend us. But
we were the hit of the show and we knew it, and
we continued to make orange-peel faces at poor dear
Edna, who endured us somehow and had long since
generously forgiven me for the "Canoe Song."

I dreamed of fashionable gentlemen drinking
champagne from my slipper, but if this tribute was
actually ever paid to an actress I never saw it. In
only a few years, however, my red slippers were
being collected for souvenirs.

I had a queer little meeting with Charles Froh-
man, who was to mean so much to me later in New
York. He was going to take The School Girl to Amer-
ica, and I wanted to go with it.

One day I was lunching at the Carlton Grill with
my Devonshire beau. We were talking, as usual,
about getting married, but I put him off gently and

36 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

somewhat abstractedly wondering what I could
make out of myself, and what my success would do
to him if I attained it. Then Charles Frohman came
in with a friend. I barely knew him, but without
stopping to think I abandoned love for career, trot-
ted over to his table, and stood humbly by until he
noticed me.

Mr. Frohman was a small, round little man with
a strong, protruding lower lip and extraordinarily
beautiful seal-colored eyes. He had almost no system
of communication. He spoke in unpunctuated tele-
grams. Actually, he made his wishes known as much
with tight little jabs of his forefinger and his eyes
as he did with words, and yet Somerset Maugham,
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero and Sir James M. Barrie
adored him and wrote their best plays for him. It
was years before I understood why.

I guess I quavered when I spoke to him.

"Mr. Frohman," I said, "I hear you are taking The
School Girl to New York, and I would like to go
with it, and I thought I would ask you, and . . ."

Mr. Frohman stopped me with his finger.

"You may go," he said. "But Edna sings 'Canoe
Song/ "

I went trembling away, for The School Girl with-
out my song would be no opportunity at all for me.

My agent was Arthur Hart, an industrious and
gentle soul who did all he could to help me, but I
doubt if all his efforts represented a tithe of
Mother's vigorous exertions. She was convinced of
the efficacy of the handwritten note, and would toil

SIR CHARLES HAWTREY 37

for hours penning the most correct and impressive
missives to producers, telling them about the mani-
fold virtues, charms and talents of her offspring. My
approach was more direct. I went everv day to var-
ious offices where plays were being considered and
announced myself as a comedienne who should be
rescued immediately from musicals.

Peter Pan, which had opened at Christmastime in
1904, was often revived during those years. Maude
Adams usually plaved it during the holidavs. but
manv other actresses owe their chance to the delight-

o

ful bov role, and I thought this might be for me.
Dion Boucicault, who was invariably so kind, did
offer to let me play one of the twins, but he was set
on Pauline Chase for Peter and that opportunity
failed me.

Meantime, and I am thankful that Mother kept
me at it, I went on with my music and elocution
lessons. I also took fencing, which was considered
a requisite for all players then but is almost for-
gotten in the theater today.

In order to work, and not because I thought I was
advancing my career a great deal, I plaved in two
musical comedies, Blue Moon, and The Duchess of
Dantzic, with Holbrook Blinn, who took the part of
Napoleon. These shows did me more good than I
realized at the time because they paved the way for
a third musical which turned out to be of the utmost
importance to me.

Edna May was starring in an amusing show called
The Belle of Mayfair at the small but famous Yaude-

38 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

ville Theater in the Strand. She had enjoyed a long
and successful run, needed a holiday and wanted to
be replaced, so when The Duchess closed, I went
almost immediately into this show opposite the de-
lightful Farren S outer, son of one of England's great-
est dancers, Nellie Farren.

The Vaudeville Theater was owned by the Gatti
Brothers, two Greek gentlemen who were also
highly successful restaurateurs. I am sorry, Brothers
Gatti, if you should read this and conclude that I am
ungrateful, but I cannot quite remember which
Gatti brother was which, although interesting things
began to happen as soon as I began to work in the
Vaudeville Theater.

First, my dressing room, which had been occu-
pied by Miss May and was already fresh and charm-
ing, was refurnished and redecorated, and this was
immediately followed by a succession of flowers and
little gifts from the management. This was followed
by a Gatti in person with offers of marriage. The
proposing Gatti was, I recall, dark and handsome
and voluble, but dear Mr. Gatti, please forgive me,
I cannot remember which one you were!

At any rate, a Gatti proposal once a week and a
successful show made life exciting and it was, in the
end, one of the Gattis who brought about the oppor-
tunity which was a turning point in my young but
somewhat stalemated career.

In the back of the balcony was the theater office,
and from this the Gattis would often watch per-
formances of The Belle of Mat/fair. One of their

SIR CHARLES HAWTREY 39

frequent guests was Charles Hawtrey, who would
come often to the theater not at all to see me act
but because he was making a deal with the Gattis
to lease the theater for his next production. Sir
Charles was one of the magnificoes of the London
stage, an actor-producer of really great distinction
who at one time or another managed sixteen theaters
in London and put on more than a hundred plays.
Off and on stage he was a charming man. He was
expert at cricket and golf, but his chief interest out-
side the theater was racing, an interest he inherited
from his redoubtable father, the Rev. John William
Hawtrey, whose High-Church principles by no
means forbade enthusiasm for improving the breed.
His son began betting at Eton, and once after he
had become a successful actor won fourteen thou-
sand pounds at Epsom Downs on a single race.

Mr. Hawtrey— he was not Sir Charles at that time
—saw The Belle of May fair so often as a result of
his interest in the Vaudeville Theater as a real-estate
venture that he finally noticed me. He had to. He
not only saw me night after night, but he heard
about me at length from the Gattis. One evening as
he was watching the show he muttered that "There
is a little girl who might be able to do something
besides musical comedy/'

The Gattis emphatically agreed with Hawtrey,
and the upshot was that Hawtrey sent a message
asking me if I would like to have a talk with him
after the next day's matinee.

40 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

I saw him in the office, having run upstairs so
that I arrived breathless and gasping instead of cool
and sophisticated as I had planned. He dropped my
future in my lap with his first remark:

"Well, Miss Burke, would you be interested in
straight comedy?"

It was as simple as that, after two years of waiting
in producers' outer offices, after the innumerable
careful notes Mother had written, after all the dis-
appointing interviews and half promises which al-
ways lead the ambitious young on, in any profession.
When the turning point comes, it invariably seems
to happen very simply, never the expected great
victory with banners waving and trumpets blaring.

I told Mr. Hawtrey how very much I would be
interested in straight comedy. I told him very em-
phatically, and I told him I could do it, too.

He smiled generously at my enthusiasm, but he
warned me.

"You will miss your dancing and singing," he said.
"You may not think so now, but comedy is dry, hard
work. There isn't much excitement, like the excite-
ment of all those young men in the same seats in the
front rows night after night."

I assured Mr. Hawtrey that young men meant
absolutely nothing to me, a statement which was
perfectly true at that moment.

"Then, if you really mean it, I will put you oppo-
site me in my new play, Mr. George. In this theater.
We had better begin rehearsals right away."

Hawtrey taught me to act. We worked from 11 to

SIR CHARLES HAWTREY 41

1:30 then from 2:30 to 4 every day to start with, and
in the beginning it must have been for him consid-
erably like trying to teach a puppy. There is a sharp
and enormous difference between playing musical
comedy and playing straight comedy, and I think I
can explain it best by putting it this way: in a musi-
cal comedy, you direct everything to the audience;
in comedy, in a play, you know the audience is there
and you play to it, but you direct yourself to your
fellow players and act as if you were in a room, not
in a theater.

Hawtrey began the tedious process of teaching me
to place a phrase, almost as it is done in singing. In
comedy you lift your points, setting up lines for the
player opposite you. It requires the most exact tim-
ing and pacing to do this skillfully, and I was lucky:
of all the actors I have ever known, I believe
Charles Hawtrey was by far the best teacher.

Also, I was fortunate in the play. I was supposed
to be an American girl freshly come to England.
The surprise to the British family which took me in
was that "Mr. George" turned out to be a girl. Al-
most all of my scenes were with Hawtrey himself,
so I learned then and there— I had to learn— to "lift
my lines" so that he could pick them up and toss
them back to me.

Hawtrey taught me the drawing-room manner as
against the more flamboyant musical-comedy man-
ner. He taught me to swing my arms naturally when
I walked across a room. He taught me to sit down
gracefully, as if I belonged in a drawing room, as if

42 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

I were a lady in a drawing room instead of a lady
on a stage.

And so, after a month of exhausting rehearsal we
opened, to the especial delight of the Gattis and of
my mother. I wore quilted taffeta skirts with velvet
panniers and some soft material at the throat. As
always, Hawtrey had mounted this production with
distinction, selecting each property, each piece of
china, every piece of furniture, with the most metic-
ulous care.

Hawtrev was a large man with big, beautiful
brown eyes, onlv forty-five years old at that time, but
this was a period play and costume was not espec-
ially flattering to him. And so it turned out that Mr.
George was a spectacular showcase for me but a
disappointment for Hawtrey himself. The play was
not a success, but glory be! I was. I was an actress
on the stage— a comedienne, at last.

Charles Hawtrey was a man with a brilliant, droll
mind. He was polished and suave and at the same
time benign, a precisionist in his art but exceedingly
cavalier about all affairs which did not contribute
directiy to that art. He was always in trouble about
money, he was always involved in debt, but he ac-
cepted his predicaments with the utmost savoir-
faire. I recall that at one time he spent so much
money and owed so much that he found it impos-
sible to pay his taxes. He owed the equivalent of
twenty-five thousand dollars and was almost with-
out a farthing in his pocket.

SIR CHARLES HAWTREY 43

His manager came to him and put it pretty baldly.

"Charlie," he said, "there is no more time and no
more excuses. They are going to put you in jail for
debt tomorrow."

"Ah, me, that would be uncomfortable," said
Hawtrey. "I shouldn't like that at all. I say, who is
Chancellor of the Exchequer now?"

The manager told him, and Hawtrey walked to the
telephone and asked to be put through to His Lord-
ship.

"I say, old boy," he said cheerfully, "there seems
to be a little inconvenience about my taxes. Sorry to
bother you, tedious detail and all that, but could
you spare a moment?"

His Lordship could and did, and Hawtrey called
on him, charmed him, and did him a favor by not
permitting the government to clap him in jail.

We saw something of London society in those days,
Mother and I. One day, a half dozen girls were
picked from various musical comedies to be pre-
sented to their Majesties, King Edward and Queen
Alexandra, and I was one of the fortunate ones. We
practiced our curtsies for several weeks, learned that
we were to say "Ma'am" if the Queen addressed us,
and arrived at the garden party in a dither in fluffy
dresses and floppy hats. When I was presented, I
curtsied so low that I could have picked dandelions,
and I tottered away from the royal presences under
the impression that they were the most godlike and
beautiful human beings in the world.

"How was my curtsy?" I asked my friend Polly.

44 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

"It was all right, dear," she told me, "except, dear,
that I doubt if it was really necessary for you to get
down on all fours/'

Dinner parties in the great London houses were
formal and formidable, and cold, but the British
overcame such small handicaps as the lack of cen-
tral heating with a practical gesture: at the door as
you entered would stand an impressive footman with
little rugs which you could spread across your knees
to keep them from freezing while you smiled at your
hostess over the silverware.

It was not all gaiety during these years. Billy
Burke was ill, living most of the time in a littie
cottage at Bath, where he could take the waters, and
coming into London only infrequently. He saw me
in The School Girl and in The Duchess of Dantzic,
but Father died before Mr. George. He was con-
fident, though, after he had finally resigned himself
to the fact that I was going to be an actress. "I will
see my baby's name in lights on Broadway yet," he
used to say. He never saw those lights, but for his
doting eye I think he saw enough to satisfy him. He
was supremely confident that I would become a star.

At Christmastime in 1906 Charles Frohman was in
London and he sent for me. His notes were as terse
as his conversation and always written in blue pen-
cil. He summoned me with a scrawl:

"Would you come to see me?— C. F." was all he
said.

Recalling his rebuff when I wanted to sing my
canoe song when The School Girl went to New

SIR CHARLES HAWTREY 45

York, I called on him at his office, expecting nothing
much. His greeting was warm. He asked me to sit
down. He began to talk about his plans.

He told me that My Wife, a play he was interested
in, had not been a success in London but that he
thought it would go well in New York. "Would you
like to go to America?" he asked me.

"Mr. Frohman, I don't suppose you remember
that I was in The School Girl and wanted to go to
America then?"

He nodded. I told him that I was with Hawtrey
and that Hawtrey had plans for me, had done a
great deal for me, and that I thought I owed him
an obligation. I was still a little miffed with Mr.
Frohman.

Frohman nodded. He understood perfectly. His
sense of fairness, of obligation, of the right thing,
always, was implicit in him and in everything he did.

"I know, I know all about it," he told me. "Maybe
you will be interested, say, by August. Hawtrey. Up
to Hawtrey."

I think that is what he said. He might have said
it with his eyes, or with one of those characteristic
little jabs with his forefinger. At any rate, he told
me that in some manner, using his abbreviated com-
munications system.

Of course, I went to Hawtrey at once, asked him
to see me that night after the performance.

"I don't know what to say," he told me. "I want
you for the new play, Mrs. Fonderbemjs Fast, be-
cause I think it would be a wonderful thing for you.

46 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

But I want to be fair to you, because Ponderberry
might not be a hit. Suppose, then, you start in the
new play, and well see how things work out. How's
that?"

I cannot tell you, without being immodest, what
a fine attitude this was for Charles Hawtrey to take.
He had developed a new, young leading lady who
knew his techniques, who had learned the intricate
business of playing opposite him, and who was pop-
ular with audiences. It was generous of him to give
me up.

We opened Mrs. Ponderberrys Past. It was a
highly amusing play with good lines for me and,
again, those beautiful, smart costumes. I had dreamy,
expensive clothes, organdies with lace set in, pastel
blue taffeta around my shoulders, and a parasol and
a big dashing hat. I was learning fast, and under
Hawtrey's continued tutelage, always so precise yet
always so kind, I was a success again.

But there were times during the run when
Charles Hawtrey frightened me a little, in a not un-
pleasant way. He was as attractive as a man could
be, had a handsome reputation for success with girls,
and there was a scene in Mrs. Ponderberry's Past in
which the curtain was fetched down as Hawtrey
unwound my wide Greek scarf, leaving me in a little
chemise, in the dark.

My maid always stationed herself in the wings,
like the Marines off stage in a melodrama, ready to
rush to me with a dressing gown.

"Never you fear, dearie," she would promise me,

SIR CHARLES HAWTREY 47

night after night. "Never you fear, 111 always get
there first."

I would stand there, shivering and curious and
blushing all over, wondering what would happen if
Hawtrey did get there first. He never did, but I
used to think he tried.

Charles Frohman waited to hear from me until
Ponderberry closed for the summer, and when I
went to him, we made an agreement for me to go to
New York to act in My Wife opposite John Drew.
The salary astonished me. Frohman offered to pay
me $500 a week, an unheard-of sum on the British
stage, and Mother and I joyfully accepted.

We accepted with our fingers crossed, in a way.
So far as we knew, the stage, the real Stage, existed
only in London. Anything else was an outpost. Play-
ing outside of London, wherever it was, was playing
the provinces.

"I'll be back by spring," I promised Hawtrey.

"I think you are going to be a very fine come-
dienne," Hawtrey told me, patting my hand, his rich
brown eyes warm with approval. "You go to Amer-
ica and make a hit there and make the money, then
come back to me and we will find something fine to
do together."

And so Mother and I sailed for New York. I never
played with Charles Hawtrey again.

5. GAD! SAID UNCLE JACK

When Mother and I arrived in New York that
hot August, 1907, 1 was taken at once by Ethel
Barrymore, as I have told, to meet John Drew, and
then rehearsals for My Wife began immediately.

At our first session, I turned to Mr. Drew and said,
"Is that the way you want me to make my en-
trance?"

"My dear child, do it any way you like," Uncle
Jack drawled. He was a little astonished, and so was
I. In London, my every action and gesture had been
guided by Hawtrey. I was amazed to discover that
the great John Drew was actually taking directions,
and very patiently, from a man I had never heard
of, Willie Seymour, who seemed to know all about
the theater.

Frohman perched in the orchestra pit, behind the
conductor's stand. He was hiding behind it, really,
because he wished the cast to forget he was there.
He would sit there with his fingers interlaced across
his middle like a kewpie, peeping up at the actors.
When we looked his way he would busy himself
with the music rack, running his fingers around the
edges, absorbed by its design— anything to create
the illusion that the play was going on without his
attention. But he was directing it. He spoke in quiet

48

gad! said uncle jack 49

asides to Seymour. Or he would nod to a player and
make his ideas known after a scene, in private.

He was never specific, and yet, somehow, you
understood precisely what he wanted. He would
merely say to me: "She's madder than that. She's
awful mad."

Or: "Look, she's left her husband. Sorry now. Very
sorry. Awful sorry. Do it."

He would punctuate these instructions with wags
of his head or jabs of his forefinger and you would
go back on stage knowing what he wanted. But he
was a martinet. He demanded long hours of re-
hearsal, work all day and every evening, and he drove
himself, rehearsing as I have said, four or five plays
at the same time.

I was coached by another martinet, my mother.
As always she went over my lines with me at home.
She gave me my "readings," showed me the nuances
of inflection she thought proper, never of course in-
terfering with the interpretation of the director but
insisting that I be letter-perfect. Indeed, she taught
me so imperiously, tossing the script back to me in
disdain when I faltered, that I virtually knew my
lines for every play upside down and sideways. I
had little trouble memorizing, having had to do it
since I was a child.

It would be both modest and more dramatic to
report that my debut in New York was nervous and
exciting and that improbable things happened. But
Uncle Jack Drew regarded one more opening night
as lightly as he looked on running over to the Players

50 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

for a game of billiards, and his savoir-faire infected
me, and all the cast.

He threw me absurd asides all through that first
performance.

I had dimples in my elbows and John Drew was
amused by them. He would put his hands under my
elbows and fumble around, trying to locate them.
Between our declarations of love he would mutter
to me: "Gad! Where are they?"

I would whisper: "Higher!"

"Gad! They're gone!" Uncle Jack would complain.

At the end of the scene I would have bitten half
through my cheeks to keep from laughing out loud.
I always got off stage as quickly as possible to double
up in the wings.

I had a little way of getting even with him, al-
though Uncle Jack was imperturbable on stage and
could not be thrown by the most unlikely ad-libs.
We had a scene in which we sat opposite each other
at a table while I dipped into my handbag for a
note. Instead of producing it, I collected every pos-
sible knickknack I could lay hands on, cotton rab-
bits, gallywogs, or an angry poodle no bigger than
a minute, or a little red ham, and would extract them
one by one, laying them out in front of him, hoping
to make Uncle Jack laugh.

"Gad! What's coming next?" Uncle Jack would
demand.

As the foolishness went on, he would ad-lib all
over the place.

"Where did that get dug up from?" he would ask

gad! said uncle jack 51

as a baby kangaroo would emerge, "Well, and it's
the note we are looking for, aren't we?"

But in the end it was always Mr. Drew who made
me fight really hard for my control. In the midst of
our tenderest scene he would murmur, almost loud
enough for the audience to hear:

"I see a human dink in the front row. Second from

the left." Or he would pretend that one of my beaux

was out front. "What now, I observe young Lord

Dundreary is in the house, waving his buck teeth at

>»
you.

And so with this kind of tomfoolery, and some

ribaldry on Uncle Jack's part, he waltzed through

the three acts and took twenty curtain calls— maybe

thirty— bowing and smiling at the audience, before

I realized that my first night in New York was over

and accomplished. By degrees it was borne in on me

that My Wife had made me a star, but to tell the

truth I was rather stupid about it: I honestly didn't

realize what had happened, it had all been so much

fun and all so easy with the skillful direction I had

had and the gracious japery of John Drew. Uncle

Jack was surrounded by the royalty of the theater

and of society the moment the curtain came down.

Among his admirers was the lovely and statuesque

Margaret Illington, who was then married to Dan

Frohman and later became Mrs. Edward (Major)

Bowes, and who I sensed was a little amazed at my

usurping her place as Uncle Jack's leading lady. Off

they would go with the Drew family in a whirl of

perfume and fur. I was petted and congratulated,

52 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

and my heart was pounding with the joy and excite-
ment and sheer warmth of having pleased an Amer-
ican audience— my own folks. I was home.

This play built up into a rather amusing curtain.
The mother and father in our drama were under the
impression, as was everyone else, that Mr. Drew and
I were living together as man and wife in name only.
But just as the parents entered at the last of the third
act, the butler announcing them, Uncle Jack unctu-
ously read the final line: "Mr. and Mrs. Eversley
have retired."

This surprised the audience— pleasantly, I think.
My Wife opened August 31, 1907, and ran for 129
performances at the Empire Theater. This play
meant so much to me, since it started me as an ac-
tress in America, a circumstance which eventually
led to a number of strange and wonderful things,
that I want to make my bow now to the players who
worked so skillfully in it and were so kind to me. I
regret to say that I have lost track of most of them,
but I shall never forget them and I have not had
to refer to the playbill to name them. Wherever they
are, still on the stage, retired, or no longer with us,
my gratitude goes to Ferdinand Gottschalk, Frank
Goldsmith, Morton Selten, Mrs. Kate Pattison-Sel-
ton, Albert Roccardi, Axel Bruun, Rex McDowell,
Dorothy Tennant, Walter Soderling, Mario Majer-
oni, L. C. Howard, Hope Latham, Herbert Budd,
May Gayler, E. Soldene Powell, Bob Schable, and
Ida Greeley Smith, granddaughter of Horace
Greeley, a beautiful water-nymph kind of girl.

Alfred Ellis b Walery

Sir Charles Hawtrey and Billie Burke in Mr. George
(London, 1906)

Early motoring days in Regent's Park. London, with my mother

gad! said uncle jack 53

Morton Selten, bless him, treated me as if I were
a baby. It was one of his special delights to fetch
me amusing trinkets for my handbag to astonish
Uncle Jack on stage and inspire one of his superb
"Gads!"

It was a friendly cast, with none of the petty bick-
ering and jealousy that often makes a production
uncomfortable. We liked our director, Willie Sey-
mour, and teased him. In rehearsing Ethel Barry-
more for another play, he had come on stage once
to read the lines of an actress who was tardy. Willie
approached Ethel and declaimed tenderly:

"I am going to have a baby."

Miss Barrymore turned her full incandescent glare
on Willie and brought up her huskiest tones.

"My God," she said.

After that, we usually greeted Mr. Seymour with
an astonished eye and a "My God."

Shortly after our opening, William Gillette, the
great aristocrat of the theater, also opened at the
Criterion in The Morals of Marcus, sl Frohman
play with Marie Doro, C. Aubrey Smith, and Bea-
trice Forbes-Robertson. I met Mr. Gillette at a little
lunch C. F. gave in his office, the predecessor of
many little lunches, for C. F. introduced me to New
York quietly, avoiding publicity stunts, strictly for-
bidding me to appear in public or even to see other
plays. It was Frohman's Napoleonic principle that
the illusions of the theater would be shattered if the
public saw too much or knew too much about his

54 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

stars— and in spite of the effectiveness of modern-
day press agentry, I still believe that he was correct.

Gillette was full of fun. We often dined at the old
Hoffman House before the theater, and many times
I went with Mother or with C. F. to his country
place where he maintained a miniature train which
was fun to ride. He was a gay and gallant gentleman
who, it seemed, was always returning from Kissing-
ton, his cue to kiss your shoulder.

The one Frohman star that we hardly ever saw
was Maude Adams. Ethel and John Barrymore, who
had met her years before she became famous, were
the only persons aside from Frohman who seemed
to know her well. When she would arrive at the
Empire for a conference with Frohman, Peter, the
sentry who stood outside the stone doorway, would
flash the news like a commander announcing a
queen, and minions would run to guard the way lest
Miss Adams be jostled or approached. C. F. spoke
of her as if she were a princess in an ivory tower.
His fine eyes would light up with worship that was
almost religious.

My Wife thrived against competition which, it
seems to me as I look back fondly on those fine days,
would be hard to match on Broadway now. Maxine
Elliott, the most beautiful woman I ever knew, who
later did me an unexpected favor, was playing with
Charles Cherry in Under the Greenwood Tree. E. H.
Sothern was solemnly but successfully acting in The
Fool Hath Said There Is No God, a dramatization
of Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment. Otis Skinner

gad! said uncle jack 55

was holding forth nightly in The Honor of the
Family. (Cornelia did not make her debut until
Blood and Sand, a few years later.) Mrs. Minnie
Maddern Fiske was having a serious year with
Ibsen's Rosmersholm, and the sensation of the Met-
ropolitan Opera was a Russian basso who was then
spelling his name "Schialiapine," later changed to
Chaliapin. David Warfield was trying to hold the
vast following he had enlisted with The Auctioneer
in The Grand Army Man, and Donald Brian and
Ethel Jackson were waltzing as no pair had ever
waltzed before in The Merry Widow.

Mabel Taliaferro was playing in Polly of the Cir-
cus. A young man from Maryville, Missouri, famed
locally as a college debater, was then in New York
trying to get on the stage. He finally got a small part
in the road company of Polly of the Circus, but
never turned out to be a good actor. He also failed
as a novelist and short-story writer before he began
teaching people how to get along with people. His
roommate was another young actor who wrote un-
successful plays. Their names were Dale Carnegie
and Howard Lindsay.

C. F. was a busy man the season of 1907. He had
other fish to fry aside from My Wife, for that year
he also produced When Knights Were Bold with
Pauline Frederick, The Ranger with Dustin Farnum
and Mary Boland, The Toy makers, in which Ray-
mond Hackett made his debut, Her Sister, starring
Ethel Barrymore, The Jesters, starring Maude
Adams, and Father and the Boys by George Ade.

56 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

David Belasco took a chance on a new star that
season when he produced The Warrens of Virginia.
Her name was Mary Pickford.

And down the street from the Empire Theater,
in the Jardin de Paris, also called the New York
Roof, a new producer who up to this point had been
noted chiefly for promoting French actresses and
professional strong men offered something brand-
new and glittering in the theater. This was a musical
revue in two acts and thirteen scenes with Harry
Watson, Frank Mayne, James Manley, Lillian Lee,
Grace La Rue, George Bickell, Emma Cams, and
Florence Tempest. The revue ran for seventy per-
formances and was called The Ziegfeld Follies.

I did not see the Follies or meet the producer
until seven years later. Indeed, when I did meet
Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., I was astonished. I had con-
fused him with Hammerstein and thought he was
a venerable gentleman with a beard.

6. C. F.

He was a little man. When he sat at his small
table-desk in his cloisterlike Gothic office in the
Empire Theater Building, in a leather upholstered
armchair, he would sometimes kick off his Congress
gaiters and his feet would dangle in the air, not
touching the floor. He was a thick little man, solidly
rounded like a top, always spinning from one project
to another, walking up and down rapidly as he
talked, nodding, jabbing with a pudgy forefinger,
leaving sentences trailing in his wake, but sometimes
snapping them like a whip with pungent, sharp
twists of tongue.

He never carried a watch. A watch was too much
trouble. It would have to be wound and would bother
him. Somebody could always tell him the time. He
never wore shoes that had to be laced, and never,
his brother Daniel Frohman said of him, did any-
thing at all that somebody else could do for him.
This included carrying money. As long as I knew
Charles Frohman I never knew him to have a cent
in his pocket. He tipped waiters with bills quickly
slipped to him by his friends or his aides, handing
over the money with a great gesture, as if he were
surprised and pleased suddenly to have such wealth
to distribute.

57

58 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

He never said "Good morning." It annoyed him
when other persons said it, and he would grumble
"Is it?" or "I doubt it" when anyone greeted him
thus. Most of the amenities of life annoyed him, in-
cluding Christmas, which he tried to ignore. Occa-
sionally, however, he gave a Christmas present.
When this happened, we always suspected that he
had hastily rewrapped a gift someone had sent him.

Frohman wore beautifully tailored suits and his
linen was fine and costly, but he managed, somehow,
the way he wore things, to give the impression that
he was disdainful of clothes.

He never carried a timepiece but lived by the
clock, invariably arriving at his office in the morning
at the stroke of nine and keeping appointments pre-
cisely on the minute. There was a clock in his office,
a chime clock, which tolled the hour in snatches of
song from the various shows he was producing. When
the hour for appointments struck, Frohman would
leave whatever visitor was with him at the moment
without excuse or good-by, whirling into his slippers
and trotting off. Often as not he was rehearsing four
or five plays on the same day— rehearsing them, of
course, in his own odd, inarticulate way, leaving the
routine to his directors and stage managers but
actually aware of every detail and inflection, com-
municating his wishes to his players through sign
language and telepathy.

In his rages, which I saw often enough, for some
of them were directed at me during the seven years
I worked for Charles Frohman, he seemed a giant.

c. f. 59

He would inflate himself, pigeonlike, turning red and
purple in the face, but the inflation did not seem
soft: rather, he seemed suddenly to grow and tower,
Neanderthal-like.

Thousands of persons in the theater had never set
eyes on Charles Frohman. He managed his business
as if he were a commander in chief, with a general
officer in charge of musicals, one in charge of drama,
one in charge of scenery, electricians, and so on. Yet
he was a quaintly romantic person whom I have seen
choke with emotion. He produced all together be-
tween five and six hundred plays, but he never could
sleep on the night before an opening. Finally he be-
came so nervous that his managers would lead him
away from the theater on opening night itself, estab-
lish him in a quiet restaurant, place a large glass of
something very sweet for him to sip, and leave him
there until the play was over.

So far as I was ever able to learn, he never read
books unless he thought they might become plays.
Once a reporter asked him what his favorite book
was. Frohman replied: "Roland Strong's The Best
Restaurants of Paris."

But he knew Alice in Wonderland thoroughly. He
was fascinated by Lewis Carroll's make-believe world,
which suggested endless numbers of scenes and stage
groupings to him. He used these in his plays: the Mad
Hatter's tea party was likely to suggest a scene in a
modern drawing-room comedy.

C. F. was always concrete, never abstract about
anything. He used to say that the best story schemes

60 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

were contained in the old nursery tales, and he liked
to point out that Monsieur Beaucaire and Cyrano de
Bergerac were actually variations of Prince Charm-
ing.

Once when we were discussing plays he told me
some of his rules. "Americans love to see women tri-
umph," he said, "triumph over men. That's why they
like The Lion and the Mouse and Within the Law.
Also, you have to make each person in the audience
believe something. Believe that he could save a situ-
ation, prevent a tragedy, or help a likable thief
escape if he could only step over the footlights and
cry out."

He said his favorite scene in any play was the
screen scene in A School for Scandal, in which there
are three persons on stage, one of them hidden. The
audience knows all the actors know and a little more.
They're just enough ahead of the plot to hope it will
work out their way. "In such case," C. F. would say,
"unhappy ending would violate wishes already im-
planted."

He had few words, barely a working vocabulary.
He was amused by persons who paraded their lan-
guage. But he could be sharp. Once he gently offered
a suggestion to Mrs. Patrick Campbell. The great
lady turned on him.

"Pardon me, Mr. Frohman," she said, "but you for-
get that I am an artist."

"Mrs. Campbell, I'll keep your secret," C. F. re-
plied.

Once when I was rehearsing Sir Arthur Wing

C. F. 61

Pinero's The Mind the Paint Girl, he suggested that
I was not reading my lines correctly. Now I always
prided myself on having my lines letter-perfect.

"I know my lines, Mr. Frohman," I remonstrated.

"I don't doubt that, Bill," C. F. said. "But you
don't seem to know Pinero's. "

C. F. had an uncanny sense of what audiences
would appreciate. One day he was talking about
the difference between British and American theater-
goers.

"Look," he said. "Suppose Americans hear some-
one in a British play mention Battersea Bridge. They
never heard of Battersea Bridge. But they say, 'Well,
all right, Battersea Bridge, what about it?' But you
mention Tammany corruption to a British audience
and what happens? You lose your audience. They
will stop watching the play. They will sit all night
and worry about what 'Tammany corruption' is."

He seldom paid any attention to a play after it
had opened. When he did see it he fetched along a
bag of peanuts or chestnuts and cracked them while
he watched. People would complain, but C. F. never
paid them the slightest attention. He would be en-
tirely lost in the story unfolding on stage.

When I came to New York, leaving our little house
in Queens Road, St. John's Wood, with every inten-
tion of returning to it next season— I had a 48-year
lease on that house in London— Charles Frohman was
forty-seven years old. He was, with the possible ex-
ception of the spectacular David Belasco, the most

62 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

renowned and certainly the most important producer
in the world. He controlled an empire, producing
both in London and in New York. He had virtually
invented the star system. He had the most gifted and
the most celebrated actors and actresses under con-
tract to him, including Maude Adams, who was mak-
ing more money than any woman in the world had
ever made on the stage. If his legs had been just a
little longer, someone said, Frohman could have
walked across America on the theaters he controlled.
Bernard Shaw once said about him: "He is the most
wildly romantic and adventurous man of my ac-
quaintance. As Charles XII became a famous soldier
through his passion for putting himself in the way
of being killed, so Charles Frohman has become a
famous manager through his passion for putting
himself in the way of being ruined."

And yet— and yet, this man was a pixie. He was
playful. His close friend was Sir James M. Barrie,
surely the most whimsical literary genius of any
day, and Frohman himself, in many of his moods,
was Barriesque. He said little, always hurrying off
unceremoniously. Conversation with C. F. was like
playing Indications. But somehow, you knew what
he meant.

How he induced Barrie to give up novel-writing
for plays is a mystery, but he did just that. After he
came under Frohman's influence near the turn of
the century, Barrie never wrote another book; but at
Frohman's request, emphasized with his little trun-
cated gestures— "You write me play— Maude Adams— "

c. f. 63

he produced The Little Minister, What Every Woman
Knows, Peter Pan, and all the other fondly remem-
bered Barrie plays.

Somehow these two small men, one a Scot, the
other the son of a Jewish emigrant peddler, under-
stood each other. Barrie saw in Frohman an integrity
and care for artistry unmatched, so far as I know,
by any other play producer of that time. They enjoyed
a rapport, a wry, almost wordless kind of humor
which enabled them to be together for hours with
scarcely a word of conversation. Also, they made
enormous sums of money for each other.

Up to 1896 it hadn't occurred to Barrie that he
might be a playwright. We all read My Lady Nico-
tine, A Window in Thrums, Sentimental Tommy
(how I wept over Griselda!) and The Little Min-
ister. I suppose today that a great many people
have forgotten that The Little Minister, one of
Maude Adams's most celebrated plays, ever was a
novel, but in '96 it was a best seller. One day a
scenario for the dramatization of the book was sub-
mitted by a literary agent to the late A. N. Palmer.
Mr. Palmer saw little in the story for dramatic pro-
duction, but on account of the great popularity of
the book wrote a cautious note to Barrie asking for
his terms.

Barrie, ever the Highlander, replied that he wanted
the usual advance and the usual royalties, but that
someone else would have to write the play, he him-
self being a novelist. Barrie said he was sorry that
he couldn't "take a hand in it" himself, but never-

64 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

theless, he demanded a playwright's commission.
Palmer balked at these terms and it seems quite pos-
sible that The Little Minister mi^ht neyer haye be-
come a play at all if Charles Frohman, then only
thirty-six years old, had not been at that exact time
searching for the proper yehicle for his unusual star,
Maude Adams.

C. F. might ha\e contributed an important note
to dramatic history if he had ever told how he in-
duced Barrie to become a playwright. So far as I
know there is no record. All that Frohman eyer gave
me when I asked him was one of his abrupt little
sentences:

"Sent him cables. "

At any rate, Frohman didn't haggle. He never
haggled. He persuaded Barrie to make his own
dramatic version, and The Little Minister had 3,000
performances in America alone, earned a half a mil-
lion dollars for Barrie and 8600,000 for Frohman. All
told, Barrie earned 8175,000 a year through his as-
sociation with C. F. They became firm friends.

Barrie used to say that he had only one quarrel
with Charles Frohman but that it lasted sixteen years.
"He wanted me to be a playwright and I wanted to
be a novelist. All those years I fought him on that.
He always won, but not because of his dozedness,
only because he was so lovable one had to do as he
wanted. He also threatened, if I stopped, to re-
produce my old plays and put my name in large
electric lights over the theater."

But Frohman appreciated Barrie as the great artist

c. f. 65

he was. In his eyes, Barrie could do no wrong. Once
Sir Herbert Tree hurried to Frohman and told him
that Barrie had gone crazy.

"You ought to know about this," he told Frohman.
"We are both so fond of him. He has gone completely
out of his mind. He has just read me a play and he
is going to read it to you, so I'm warning you. I know
I'm not gone woozy in my mind for I've tested my-
self since hearing the play, but Barrie must be mad.
He has written four acts all about fairies, children
and Indians, running through the most incoherent
story you ever listened to. And what do you suppose?
The last act is to be played in the tops of trees!"

Frohman hurried to Barrie, heard the play, and
agreed to produce Peter Pan at once.

I have set out to explain the paradox of this aston-
ishing man Charles Frohman, who was my manager,
friend, protector, adviser and my absolute boss for
seven years, but perhaps I have succeeded only in
deepening the mystery. He lived alone. Few seemed
to know him intimately, though he had many friends.
At one time he controlled in New York the Empire,
Garrick, Knickerbocker, Lyceum and Savoy Theaters,
and in London the Duke of York's, the Globe, the
Comedy, the Vaudeville and the Empire. He was
accused, and rightly so, of creating a theater trust
in America, of gobbling up theaters to confound
competitors, and certainly he was the leading prac-
titioner of the "star system," which George Jean
Nathan and other critics attacked as pernicious long
before Hollywood began to place such inartistic em-

66 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

phasis on photogenic personalities. And yet this
Napoleon of the drama was on the most intimate
terms, quite aside from financial considerations, with
the two rarest spirits of the theater— probably the two
rarest spirits of the times— James M. Barrie and
Maude Adams. Frohman was the catalytic aeent that
brought them together, combined their talents, and
exploited them. I am certain, though, that he loyed
them both. And he was in loye with Maude Adams.

When I came to New York that was the report,
and it was eyen belieyed bv many that they were
married. But I do not know about that, and I suspect
no one knew. C. F. certainly adored Miss Adams,
but he adored her in a special way; I think Charles
Frohman loyed Maude Adams as a hungry spirit
lo\es music and poetry and as a fine boy loyes his
heroes and their ideals. Miss Adams was to Frohman,
I imagine, what she was to eyeryone else: a sprite.

Paradox heaps on paradox when you try to pin
down Charles Frohman. All who worked for him
quickly learned to have a protective feeling about
him. You felt his integrity and his fineness, vou
trusted him, and you wanted to please him. It was
odd to have this feeling about a man who was con-
sidered ruthless in business. And if he looked on
Barrie and Maude Adams as out-of-the-worldlings,
he also took pains to arrange things very much to
their practical advantage.

Barrie and Maude Adams he made millionaires.
Under C. F.'s guidance Miss Adams, who seemed to
have little more use for money than a child, earned

c. f. 67

upwards of half a million dollars a year. When she
toured in What Every Woman Knows, the Barrie
play, she was paid $20,000 a week— and the tour made
-$125,000 for Barrie and Frohman. From her plavs in
the Empire Theater in New York alone Miss Adams
is reported to have harvested more than a million
and a half dollars. When you consider today's taxes,
perhaps her income was sreater even than that of
our highest paid motion picture stars.

I can think of no parallel to this. Is there, or was
there ever, such a man as Charles Frohman. who
could deal so adroitly with whimsy and so firmlv with
Mammon?

7. BUTTONS AND BOWS

New York amazed me. I was amazed every night
when I came out of the stage door of the Empire
Theater to look up and see the dark blue of the sky
and the clear stars. This was so new to me. I had been
used to groping may way through the London fog. I
was amazed to see so many women drinking whisky,
often too much of it. Perhaps because I preferred
absinthe frappe and had been brought up on Guin-
ness' stout. And there were other surprises in store
for me. But my social life in New York was on the
whole rigidly circumscribed by my duenna, Mr.
Charles Frohman. Both C. F. and Mother were ob-
sessed by the notion that I might be gobbled up by
some wicked young man— never mind if he was rich,
handsome and Social Register and with the most im-
peccable intentions. It was their firm intention to
keep their little flower both unsullied and unmarried
for as long as possible. Meantime, of course, I corre-
sponded fervently with my Devonshire beau and fell
absent-mindedly in and out of love with this one and
that one about as regularly as I washed my hair.

But for quite a while, under all this tender surveil-
lance, most of my male companions were distin-
guished gentlemen many years my senior. William
Gillette, for instance, and Mark Twain.

68

BUTTONS AND BOWS 69

Gillette, to repeat, was the great gentleman of the
theater. He was also a wit, capable of more searching
thrusts, it seems to me, than what passes for repartee
in today's tedious cafe society. Once he was discussing
a middle-aging actor who had married a young wife.

"Yes," he said, "poor So-and-so, he has a young
wife who loves him passionately and annoys him in
other ways."

When I saw Mark Twain, just three years before
his death on the night that Halley's comet rose again,
our greatest novelist was in the turmoil of spirit and
mind which followed the death of his wife, the be-
loved "Livvy," and the death of his favorite daughter.
He wrote, I have been told, some three or four hun-
dred stories and unfinished novels during his last ten
years, none of them good, according to his standards,
and he seemed to have come to the conclusion that
all the world was a dream, all was futile.

According to Dixon Wecter, who is now at the
Huntington Library studying a vast collection of un-
published stories and letters by Mark Twain during
this period, almost nothing he left showed the gaiety
and humor that marked his earlier works. He spent
hours composing the most scathing kind of com-
plaints to theater managers and traction companies
whose employees, he claimed, had not shown proper
courtesy to his daughters. He threatened to use all
his influence to hound and destroy offending street
car conductors and theater ushers. He complained
violently against bank presidents— but, having got

70 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

the venom out of his system, he filed these letters
and never mailed them.

But with me, in 1907 and 1908, he was gay and
amusing. I did not understand his tragedy until years
later.

He loved the theater, often occupying a box with
friends to see our play, and he enjoyed coming back-
stage to visit Mr. Drew and me. It was always exciting
and enjoyable to see him. He would shake that beau-
tiful shock of snowy white hair and lean his wonder-
ful head against mine to say, "Billie, we redheads
have to stick together."

I thought nothing of making a trip to New York
from either Boston or Philadelphia after the show if
he had invited me to one of his charming little Sunday
night dinners. He used to give these at that dear old
house on lower Fifth Avenue, about Ninth Street,
which had a quaint dining room of the period with
sliding doors which pushed back into the walls after
dinner; then one found oneself rustling with the ladies
into the drawing room which looked out on the Ave-
nue. Washington Square and the lower part of Fifth
Avenue, it always seems to me, still holds so much
romance of old New York.

I remember the Favershams, Julia and Willie, and
their adorable house, where at a soiree I first met
Mary Garden. When I was presented to her by the
lovely Julia, who said I was a little American girl
who had returned to her own land, Miss Garden gave
me a rather cool reception, a mere nod of her mag-
nificent head set on those beautiful, famous shoulders.

BUTTONS AND BOWS 71

Though I was slightly chagrined I was deeply im-
pressed by her regal personality. Her sweet sister and
her father later made up to me any indifference the
opera star may have exhibited.

Mark Twain seldom said anything funny in those
days, but one line of his I shall never forget. He said
it to me, then inscribed it on a photograph:

"Truth is the most valuable thing we have, Billie.
Let us always economize it"

Both Frohmans, Dan and C. F., used to play bil-
liards with Mark Twain at the Players and although
Dr. Clemens had been a billiard player all his life
and considered himself an expert he was not good
enough to compete with these Broadway masters.
But they were kind.

"He doesn't win enough, he's unhappy," Dan told
C. F. "Let's let him win every third game." And they
did just that, in spite of the fact that Mark Twain
was meeting them every day in court in a bitterly
contested lawsuit.

Besides these amiable companions, I soon found
myself being introduced to another kind of society,
that of the Goulds and the As tors. One of my mentors
was the renowned Frederick Townsend Martin,
"Freddy" to his friends, a small man with a kind of
walrussy moustache, very fussy but really a darling
and an expert with the ladies. Freddy was the kind
who purrs over you, arranging everything in the
height of elegance. All very impersonal, mind you. He
gave beautifully arranged parties at his Newport
place and at his big house on Fifth Avenue. My first

72 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

impression of New York society will always be
flavored with the peculiar fragrance of rum and
chrysanthemums. Freddy's house was always pro-
fusely decorated with these flowers and others fol-
lowed suit. The favorite entertainment was a tea
between 4 and 7 at which the refreshments consisted
chiefly of hot tea into which you poured a little rum
from a carafe. It may not sound particularly appe-
tizing now, I know, to a generation of cocktail
drinkers, but we thought it was very special then.

On the few occasions when we went to restaurants,
Bustanoby's, Sherry's or Delmonico's were the proper
places to go. So far as I know there was no such thing
in New York as a "night club" until, say, 1910 at least.
These restaurants catered to big private parties,
providing several rooms and three- or four-piece
Negro orchestras for dancing. Duck a la presse was
the thing to eat, and the avocado was a luxurious
rarity.

In England, for some reason, it was commonly be-
lieved that all oysters were poisonous. It was de-
creed that you had to remove the curly end and
hard lump and eat only the fat, white part, and this
was called "bearding the oyster." In London the
headwaiter did this for you, but in New York, where
they didn't, where you were supposed to gulp the
entire oyster, I used to try to "beard" mine, always
making an unattractive mess of things.

One of my escorts looked at me in nauseated
astonishment one evening as I performed this opera-
tion.

BUTTONS AND BOWS 73

"For Heaven's sake, Bilhe, I will have to walk
around the block while you do that," he announced,
and he did.

I met Minnie Maddern Fiske once or twice but
never really knew her, though she must have been a
remarkable woman and magnificent actress. Mrs.
Fiske belonged to the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals and once called on me to enlist
me in a campaign of hers against wearing furs or
feathers. Mrs. Fiske was one of the first women I
had seen smoke. She did it in spite of her veil, which
she raised and dropped like a second-act curtain.
She would lift the veil and puff, making long the-
atrical gestures with her cigarette, drop the veil, lift
it again, smoke and gesture, puff and gesture, drop
the curtain. This act so enchanted me that I failed
to get up much enthusiasm for not wearing chin-
chilla.

As for furs, we all wore them. They were much
cheaper then, perhaps a third of what they cost
now. Our coats were chinchillas, long, to the ankles,
and our hats were invariably decked out with long,
sweeping plumes over one side, aigrettes, I think.
We had little corsets ( never mentioned ) , fine silk
stockings, very thin, and evening hose with lace
inserts. (Never a word about them.)

My five hundred a week, a commonplace for
supporting actors in the theater a few years later,
kept Mother and me in elegant style. We had an
Italia car, beige-colored, beautifully appointed in-
side, and a uniformed chauffeur named Rivet in

74 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

black livery. His salary, I believe, was eighty dollars
a month, and Thurston my English maid, received
somewhat less than that.

Cloth coats were lined with fur, squirrel, baby
sable, mink even, although mink was not the glam-
orous fur it has become today. Sable jackets were
reasonable, as was ermine. Most of the men wore
fur coats then. They used mink for the lining.

Some years later when Flo Ziegfeld used to come
to my dressing room, he found one night that an-
other suitor was ahead of him. This gentleman was
regarding himself in a mirror, arranging his coat,
when Flo arrived. Flo walked past him, threw open
the door and frowned at me.

"Of all the damn fools I ever saw," he growled.
"Who is that guy out there primping his mink?"

But after we were married, the first thing Ziegfeld
did was buy himself a mink coat.

I was a contented little thing. I had my work,
which was easy, pretty clothes, security and ap-
plause. I wish I could report that I was ambitious,
battling for opportunity, trying to learn. But it was
not so. I have always enjoyed reading biographies
and I read them with a questing eye for helpful
hints when I started this book. Almost always, I
discovered, the heroes and heroines of these self-
told tales suffered in their youth, yearned, struggled,
dreamed of future greatness and met crisis after
crisis with character and skill. Sometimes they ac-
knowledge disastrous mistakes, but they are always

BUTTONS AND BOWS 75

deciding between this course and that course of
action. The pattern is so pat that I am inclined to
wink at it.

Few of us, I suspect, even the great ones, ever
have the opportunity to plan our careers. Usually
we do not even recognize the crossroads when we
come to them. These crossroads are, unfortunately,
laid out like the streets of Los Angeles, confused,
hurried, crowded, and with the signposts placed so
that no light ever shines on them. I can point out
the turning points in my life now but when I first
saw them I did not recognize them. I believe that
most people do what they have to do at the time.
What I had to do was be as pretty as I could and
as gay as I could on the stage, so I did that.

Nothing happened at this time of my life, in-
deed, to inspire me with the notion that I might one
day become a great actress. Certainly, the critics
did not encourage me. Percy Hammond, whose criti-
cisms were likened to "venom from contented rattle-
snakes," thought that I was "pretty," "beguiling" and
"lovable" but that I amounted to nothing in a his-
trionic way. He wrote that when he looked at all
the silly faces packed to the roof to see me act he
was baffled for an answer. Another famous critic of
that time, Alan Dale, came to interview me once and
wrote a rather charming piece. But he confessed that
he approached the interview with dread, convinced
that I would perch on the arm of his chair.

Throughout my entire career up to now I cannot
recall any critic who completely approved of me.

76 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

They paid me compliments, but even then they were
exceeded in grace by the weather reporter for the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch. When I played there in
My Wife with Mr. Drew, he wrote:

"Forecast for today: as fair as Billie Burke."

We went on tour in January and played until late
in the spring. Throughout this trip, which took us
all the way to San Francisco and back, Uncle Jack
labored to trip me into uttering a Britishism on stage,
but by this time I had learned to cope with him. He
turned then to antic comment about my luggage.
Mother and I always traveled with odd hampers,
boxes, wicker trunks, things which fell to pieces and
revealed our underclothes every time they were
tossed around. Gradually we learned that solid ex-
pensive American luggage is the best thing for trans-
continental tours.

Uncle Jack amused the entire company, enter-
tained us lavishly with dinner parties, ordered
cavalcades of carriages for us to go sight-seeing in,
and introduced us to his friends in every large and
small city en route. In San Francisco we were often
the guests of the officers of the Pacific Fleet, which
had put in there as a respite from the round-the-
world cruise ordered by Theodore Roosevelt. We
could go out daily in the captain's barge, bouncing
over the choppy waters, and Uncle Jack would in-
variably become seasick. But he never missed a trip.

Mother particularly enjoyed this tour because
she could walk into stores and look over the Billie

BUTTONS AND BOWS 77

Burke curls and dresses which had become a fad
after our hit in Xew York. My hair was always long,
but in order to save time in make-up I had had made
in London a handful of little red curls which I
attached to the back of my head and which bobbed
as I walked, always looking as if they were about to
fall off. Hepner the hair man. close friend of so
manv important theatrical people, had the franchise
for the sale of these curls and he offered them in
everv department store in America. Parents bought
them for their little girls much as they bought
Shirley Temple dresses in a somewhat later daw

Mother would walk into a store in Atlanta or
Dallas, call for the curls, then swell with pride and
point to me. "That ts Billie Burke," she would saw
The stores also sold dresses with flat collars and lace,
"Billie Burke dresses," and these too became quite
popular.

I had fun. In Minneapolis it snowed. I sot awav
from the company, bought a small sled, and plaved
on the street taking belly-whoppers with the kids
for one whole afternoon. Our company manager was
horrified, pointing out how disgraceful if the press
got hold of the story of this undignified behavior of
a Charles Frohman actress. Todav, of course, press
agents beg their stars to do unusual things and when
thev don't, pretend they do.

In San Francisco we plaved in the Van Ness The-
ater, which had been hurriedly built after the fire.
This was the fire (never called anything but a fire
in San Francisco, which vou mustn't call "Frisco,"

78 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

either) that destroyed the tall buildings and inspired
Uncle Jack's remark that it took an earthquake to
shake his nephew John Barrymore out of bed an3
put him to work. Our theater had a corrugated tin
roof which shook and rattled and thundered during
every performance but we were seasoned troupers
and didn't mind. There were always those beautifully
uniformed Naval officers out front to play to and
they were used to noise.

Two more John Drew anecdotes are worth setting
down, I think. Once when he was touring the South
with E. H. Sothern (Uncle Jack said), a stranger
stopped Sothern on the street and complimented him
on his acting. "Mr. Mansfield, I am very glad to see
you here. I am going to see every performance. I think
you are our greatest actor, Mr. Mansfield."

"Why didn't you say something?" Uncle Jack
asked Sothern.

"What was there to say?" Sothern asked.

"He doesn't know that Mansfield is dead," Uncle
Jack said.

"Well," said Sothern, "that doesn't hurt me much.
I'm sorry about Mansfield, but that man doesn't even
know Vm alive."

Joseph H. Choate, who had been our ambassador
to the Court of St. James, stopped Uncle Jack on the
street one day.

"Good God, it's Drew!" he said.

Drew admitted he was Drew.

"But you look just the same," said Choate. "Why
don't you ever grow any older?"

BUTTONS AND BOWS 79

"I don't know, Mr. Choate," Uncle Jack said,
"unless I can explain it in the words of Adam in
As You Like It: 'Never in my youth did I apply
hot and rebellious liquors in my blood/ "

Choate looked at Uncle Jack quizzically.

"Now look, Drew, how much truth is there in
that?"

"None at all, sir," said Uncle Jack. "But it's a good
quote, isn't it?"

When we returned from the tour I had attained
—how shall I say it? It wasn't fame. It was a certain
kind of niche of my own. I was a new kind of actress,
carefree and red-headed and I had beautiful clothes.
The clothes, of course, were as important as any-
thing else at the start of my stage life. They attracted
attention in London and Charles Frohman saw
that they attracted attention in New York and on
the road.

The styles of 1907 were in general quite ugly.
Women wore heavy dark clothes. But I always ap-
peared on stage in light, close-fitting things, with
point cfesprit lace, white with a rose sash, a hat
ruffled with Valenciennes and crushed ribbons. Be-
fore I knew it, I was setting styles. It was done this
way:

My dressmaker was Madame Hayward of London,
who made lovely gowns for a very few people.
Madame Hayward used to run over quickly to Paris
and anticipate what the great fashion houses were
up to there. She would return to London and design

SO WITH A FEATHER OX MY NOSE

new frocks for me and I would appear in New York
with all my things at least a season ahead of the
style in America.

All of this was paid for by C. F. His managers
used to quibble, to be sure, when I would turn in
expense accounts for dozens of white gloves at a
time.

"Why can't you wear the gloves you wore last
week?" they would demand.

"Thev 're a little gray," I would reply. "They have
to be pure white or I don't feel fresh." And so we
would purchase another dozen pairs of white kid
gloves, arm length.

But as I was saying when I was interrupted by
Madame Havward, we returned from the tour, C. F.
called me in, patted my hand, and said, "Going to
give you your own company next year."

He meant that in my next play I would be starred.

I have been asked a good many times about the
make-up that women used before there was a beauty
parlor on every corner. On stage, of course, we used
fairly heavy make-up generally supplied by German
experts, who were the world's best then. But for street
and evening wear, our make-up was extremelv sim-
ple. Girls with blonde eyebrows and eyelashes, like
me, were forced to use a little burnt cork in order
to keep from looking like rabbits, but mascara was
never used except on stage.

We used no lipstick or rouge at all. Only poor lost

BUTTONS AND BOWS 81

ladies wore that, and one of the most damning things
vou could say of a woman was "She paints."

But we took tender care of our skin. We used a
raw cucumber lotion made with milk and the white
of an egg. When we were very tired we would put
the white of an egg on our faces, then rub it off in
warm water.

For colds or bronchial ailments we applied hot
onion poultices, and always for our baths we inserted
a little bag of vellow bran meal. This made the water
wonderfully soft and refreshing.

We took the greatest pains with our hair but did
not wash it as often as nowadays. No matter how
tired we were, our maids had to brush that hair for
hundreds of strokes morning and night. For washing
we used castile soap and sometimes put a little lernon
juice in the rinse water. It was not until a few years
later that I learned from a certain interesting gentle-
man that a pint of champagne is more effective for
highlighting the golden glints.

There was a kind of French chalk, a powder
Mother used; which she crushed and made herself.
She used to put a tiny dab on the end of my nose,
then carefully wipe it off.

If these unguents make me sound too much like
a vegetable plate I can only say that they were effec-
tive and that most of the actresses and society women
I knew then used thern. There were no elaborate
beautv salons with electric massages and fan maga-
zines in those days.

The chief thing we did then for beauty aid was

S2 WITH A FEATHER OX MY NOSE

exercise. And this is something I have never ne£-
lected all my life. Today I begin my every morning
bv standing on my head. Then I turn somersaults,
then take a cold shower. Coffee drinkers will not be-
lieve me, of course, but this is a fresher and better
way to start the day than with caffein.

As a young girl I worked with Indian clubs every
morning and with a bar bell. This keeps you thin in
the waist. Always, whether I was on Broadwav or on
tour, I walked my five miles a day. I seldom arrived
at a new hotel with the rest of the company, but took
a cab out to some country club about an hour's walk
away and trudged into town leading mv dog;. This
had a double advantage, for by the time I reached
my hotel Mother and my maid would have done all
the unpacking.

Eating at night is always one of the great dangers
for players. You don't want to eat before a perform-
ance and you are invariably famished afterwards and
inclined to pile on too many calories. I might as well
confess: I have always had a tendencv to be roly-
poly. I have dieted carefully all my life. Eight years
ago I gave up meat and although my friends accuse
me of subsisting on rabbit food I feel better for it.

8. ALL THAT GLITTERS

And then I saw my name in lights.
L As I have admitted, I was not an ambitious
girl. I had not hankered for fame or visualized myself
as accomplishing great things. But when Charles
Frohman told me that I was to have my own com-
pany I was delighted and a little awed by the notion
of seeing my name shining on Broadway in company
with such distinguished players as Mrs. Patrick
Campbell, Mrs. Minnie Maddern Fiske, Maude
Adams, Lillian Russell, and Maxine Elliott. I hugged
the idea to me and thought that my first glimpse of
glory would be as profound a thrill as Cortez's in the
schoolboy classic when he first saw the Pacific.

Towards the end of rehearsals of Love Watches I
was hurrying back to the Lyceum Theatre on foot
from the Knickerbocker Hotel nearing 47th Street.
My eyes were attracted by the lights over the theater
entrance— and there it was— Billie sitting on top of
the Burke, all spelled correctly in electric lights as
tall as myself.

To make this a better story I should invent some
fable about having run sobbing to Charles Frohman,
dropping to my knees by his chair and crying, "Ah!
My dear, dear friend !" That would be in the theatri-
cal tradition and you might even believe it.

83

S4 WITH A FEATHER OX MY NOSE

But all I did was to stop a moment, my heart skip-
ping a beat, and just gaze. Then somewhere out of
that other world we call the subconscious came a
voice in my ear. a dear, whimsical voice saving,
'"Someday 111 see my baby's name on Broadway in
lights bigger than she is." And there it was! I'm sure
Billv Burke saw them too from a pinnacle far higher
than we can measure: and for a second I could
imagine a gay chortle and see a merrv face balancing
a feather on his nose with sheer delight.

Persons more experienced than I was then know,
of course, that these expected moments of triumph
are always disappointing. We all work up to our
little or big successes gradually, so that when we do
manage them they are usually merely part of the
work at hand. As a matter of fact, it is my notion
that our fairest experiences are seldom the dramatic
ones. You do not have to be Xapoleon at Austerlitz
or a Democrat who has humbled the pollsters to
taste the best triumphs in life: nothing could make
any of us more arrogantly proud than when our chil-
dren suddenly say something intelligent. And no
financier ever exulted over a staggering Wall Street
coup with the warm delight I feel when I find a
dollar in an old coat pocket. We may not be poets
but we can enjoy a country road after a spring rain
as much as thev, and who knows? Perhaps we smell
it better.

Which is to saw my friends, don't envy the people
who get their names in lights. They don't get as much

Dover Street Studios

In Mrs. Ponderbury's Past (London. 1906)

White

Charles Frohman

ALL THAT GLITTERS 85

kick out of it as you may think they do. They just
worry about how to keep their light shining.

For my 1908-09 season I had the best play I was
ever in: Love Watches, sl comedy in four acts from
the French of R. de Flers and G. Caillavet, the
Parisian collaborators who were writing so many suc-
cesses. It had a wonderful cast, and again, those
smart ahead-of-the-fashion clothes. We played for
almost two years with 172 performances in New
York. Of course, there have been great theatrical
seasons in New York before and since, but these early
ones naturally seem to me to have been the grandest
of all. There are always giants in your extreme youth.

Love Watches lingers in my memory as one of my
most delightful plays. It was about a young wife in
her first year of marriage and might well have been
called The First Year, but unlike that fine American
play of a few years later, my vehicle was written with
Gallic insouciance, with more emphasis on romance
than on the budget.

As an example of what smart direction can do for
a play, we had a scene in which I as the distressed
bride fled to my friend, played by Ernest Lawford,
after my first quarrel with my husband. Ernest en-
acted a bookish character and met me in his library,
where I was supposed to become rather frightened
of him. When Charles Frohman saw us rehearsing
this scene he directed me to run up the library lad-
der, which went around the books on a little track,
and refuse to come down. It was rather an engaging

86 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

bit of business which I enjoyed doing and which
seemed to please audiences.

This was the year of an amusing contretemps in
which Harrison Grey Fiske and Henry W. Savage
both produced Ferenc Molnar's The Devil, each
claiming to have a prior agreement with Molnar's
agent. Neither company was particularly successful,
but the Savage company helped the career of George
Arliss, a young man who had come to America with
Mrs. Pat Campbell, expecting like me to return
quicklv to London. Mr. Arliss staved twenty-two
years before he played on the British stage again.

Lillian Russell was playing in Wildfire. I met her
first— and it seems entirely appropriate— in Tiffany's,
a perfect background for her, with her eves so peri-
winkle blue, full of mirth and so beautifully set in
her lovely head. Oh, yes, she was just as marvelous
as they say.

Not far from us Uncle Jack began his season with
a Somerset Maugham play, Jack Straw, in which he
introduced a new leading lady to succeed me. Her
name was Mary Boland. James K. Hackett was act-
ing in The Prisoner of Zenda and Walter Hampden
was appearing in Charles Rann Kennedy's The Serv-
ant in the House.

Maude Adams was the greatest hit in town, natu-
rallv. She was starring in Barrie's What Every Woman
Knows, the kind of thing I wish I had been clever
enoudi to have merited.

The most important debut that vear was not that
of an actor but of a new playwright, Edward Shel-

ALL THAT GLITT,

s:

don— enormously talented, kind. wise. lo\ - Xed
Sheldon who meant so much to me and to all his
friends. In 190S Xed was fresh out of Professor
Wge Pierce Baker's Workshop at Har.wr;: wi:h ;.n
M. A. in one pocket and his first play in the other.
The drama was Salvation Sell, in which Mrs. Minnie
Maddern Fiske starred, the first of a long succession
of brilliant plavs until Ned's ill-starred but beautiful
death onlv a few years ago.

Eva Tan sua v joined the Ziegfeld Follies that vear.
So did Norah Baves. I heard about their being there
but I never saw them, or Ziegfeld either, for that
matter, because I did not see a Ziegfeld Follies until
some years later.

My leading man in Love Watches was Cvril
Keightiev. He was a handsome bov with waw hair
parted in the middle, looked like a young Walter
Huston, and was a highly competent actor to boot.
But one night I saw the strangest idling, j Was pass-
ing his dressing room and his door was slightly ajar.
I will admit I alwavs look in doors that are slightly
ajar.

There stood Cvril in his shorts and a top hat. That
was all. Shorts and a top hat. I skidded to a stop
and trotted back.

"Well, sir/"' I said, pushing the door all the way
open. "You are awfullv prettv but I never saw such
an astonishing setup."

Cyril tipped his hat to me and went right on look-
in; at himself in the mirror.

"My hair.'"' he said.

88 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

"Your hair?"

"It's like this," said Cyril, patting make-up on his
face. "My hair is too curly. It kinks up. So I have to
use stuff on it. I have to do that before I start my
make-up. I have experimented with every kind of
device to set my hair after I put the stuff on it and
I have discovered that the best of all possible things
is my top hat. So I wear the top hat to set my hair.
Do you set your hair, Billie? I recommend a top hat."

All actors are a little mad, as possibly you already
know.

As for leading men, I believe every actress will
agree with me that this is true: you are either in love
with them or you despise them. You explore make-
believe romance with them night after night, you let
them make love to you— and vice versa— on stage,
you travel with them and you succeed or fail with
them. All told I have worked with a great number
of leading men and my average is pretty good: I
only hated about half of them. In all justice to these
gentlemen, however, I have to admit I was lucky
enough, always, to get excellent actors. I owe so
much to them and so much to the carefully selected
casts that Charles Frohman always gave me. In Love
Watches we had Ernest Lawford, Cyril Keightley,
W. H. Crompton, Stanley Dark, Horace H. Porter,
William Claire, William Edgar, Maude Odell, Kate
Meek, Louise Drew, Isabel West, Ida Greeley Smith,
Annie Bradley, Laura Clement, Maude S. Love, and
Charlotte Shelby. I ask each one of them to step
forward now for a little curtain call, especially Char-

ALL THAT GLITTERS 89

lotte Shelby, who had two little girls with blonde
curls, one of them afterwards known as Mary Miles
Minter.

If my acting did not set the Hudson afire, my new
clothes did fetch the audience. There was always a
gasp and a little flutter of surprise on my entrance.
I played that entrance to the hilt, you may be sure.

In the second act, in the scene in which I left my
husband, I wore a large hat, a long stole, and a muff
of pure white swan's-down. The stole was lined with
turquoise velvet. At any rate, this was a buoyant
getup, either for the stage or for bidding a husband
farewell.

And in the last act Madame Hayward had made
for me a shell-pink dress in lame embroidered in
diamonds and pearls, with geraniums at my waist
and in my hair— an interesting effect, since it has
always been argued that red-headed women could
not wear red.

I honestly think I dressed more to please women
than to please men. Chiefly I dressed to make myself
seem as attractive as possible on stage. But as Lady
Duff-Gordon told me once after she had moved over
from London to set up shop in New York as a high-
fashion dressmaker, "A girl should always dress with
lots of little bows and ribbons so that a man will
want to undo them one by one."

We began our second season of Love Watches with
a tour of New England, and on our way to Boston
I met with what seemed to be a very trivial accident.
I pricked my finger on a thorn of a rose. But this

90 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

turned into a little swelling, a small red line started
inching up the back of my hand, and then another.
In Hartford I was feverish and sick and a doctor
painted my hand with something painful. I went on
stage with my arm in a sling and read my playful
lines through gritted teeth. My temperature was
104°.

We had a really wonderful doctor in Northampton.
He stayed up all night poulticing my arm with flax-
seed. In the morning he called in a specialist from
Boston, a cold little man who examined me, con-
ferred with my doctor, and announced firmly that the
only hope of saving my life was amputation. A
strep infection had set in. My entire arm was swollen
and red, at least three times normal size.

My own doctor and I looked at each other. "We
will work something out," he said calmly.

I was sure then, as I am sure now, that my guard-
ian angel sent this wonderful man to me. All my
life I have never ceased to bless his name. I have
never once forgotten. But I have been advised that
because of his devotion to his profession he would
consider it unethical for his name to be in print, so
I reluctantly omit it.

My Northampton doctor gave me something more
than medical attention. He gave me Faith. I prayed,
and I had complete Faith because he brought me
Faith. I have never had the slightest doubt that my
recovery was a complete demonstration.

Mother, bless her, had faith too. Mother, of course,
always had faith. She was indomitable.

ALL THAT GLITTERS 91

"Billie will never be any good without her arm,"
she said. "She would be miserable the rest of her
life."

"We will work something out," my doctor said.
We knew that he would.

We lost the four weeks Boston engagement, of
course. Frohman was generous about that, though.
He closed the show at once, sending one of his terse
telegrams :

CANCEL BOSTON THERE ARE MANY PLAYS
THERE IS ONLY ONE BILLIE BURKE.

They would dress me in the morning and take me
to the park to get fresh blood in me. Amazing strides
have been made in medicine since, I know, espe-
cially in the sulpha drugs, but they had nothing like
that then. It was touch and go for twenty-four hours
while the poison mounted toward my heart. Both
my nurses were skeptical and continually urged me
to call for the surgeon, with his knives, but I said
"No."

Finally, my doctor performed a minor surgery
himself, finding that the time had come to drain off
some poison, and slowly I began to get better. We
went to Atlantic City to take in the bracing air for
a week and I was trundled up and down the board-
walk. Charles Frohman never let me see the bills.
He paid not only my salary during this layoff, but
the salaries of the entire company.

When Love Watches resumed again we went on
tour. We traveled a la Blanche Burke, of course,

92

WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

with dozens of silk pillows to prop us up, several
dogs, our personal maid, and our myriad numbers
of trunks and boxes. From then on we seldom stopped
at hotels. Our advance man (we had a wonderful
press agent named Francis Reid) would engage a
house or apartment for us and it would be complete,
spic-and-span and bright for us when we arrived. I
was treated like a little princess on a cushion. My
dressing room was always done over, even for a short
engagement, with fresh draperies, and all my own
elaborate things were always established there be-
fore I arrived. Yes, beyond any question at all, I
was spoiled.

But then, so were many other actresses. This was
the era of spoiled actresses. Maxine Elliott once ex-
pressed astonishment and horror that I traveled in
Pullman cars at all.

"My dear," she said, ' riow do you stand it? Those
terrible coaches. I wouldn't dream of moving from
New York to Philadelphia, even, unless it was in my
private car."

When we played in Washington we had a delight-
ful visitor. This was a little, old, wrinkled, sweet-
faced Negro woman whom we always addressed
respectfully as "Cousin Lucy." She had been a servant
of Mother's and before that had worked for my
grandmother, all her life having worked with just
two families, but now she was too old for toil. I
managed to make arrangements for her to have a
home for the rest of her life, and left some money
so that she would always be cared for.

ALL THAT GLITTERS 93

Cousin Lucy came to lunch with me at the Willard,
and after she had embraced me and petted me and
babied me, I asked her what she wanted most.

"Well," she said, "you is mighty pitty, baby chile,
you is mighty pitty, but yo' Mother, now, she was
plum* beautiful. I use* to iron her petticoats, and dey
was so stiff when dey rustled as she walk, you could
jes hear em saying 'Dollar a yard, dollar a yard,
dollar a yard/ Yes'm, dey is somethin' I wants. I
would des love to have me a nice pair of windin'
sheets."

One of the fine cities in which I did not arrive in
my private car was Charlotte, North Carolina. An
amazing thing happened there. I became a mother.

I cannot explain these facts of life to you satisfac-
torily. I was busy seeing America and busy with my
acting. All I know is that my mother, who was always
arranging and always managing, in some manner
met an old friend, May Watson; a lady whose hus-
band seemed to have wandered away. Mrs. Watson
had a small daughter and was having a hard time,
so when we left Charlotte we arranged for them to
meet us at our house in Yonkers.

This was near the end of our 1910 season and we
were due to sail soon for London. Halfway over we
received a wireless that Mrs. Watson was ill, and
before we docked came the shocking news that she
had contracted pneumonia and had died, leaving her
little girl alone.

Frantically we cabled back and forth, had the
house closed, put the child in care of a purser, and

94 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

started her on her way to join us in Paris. She was
about ten, very pretty, very delicate, and very thin.
She was horribly seasick, and on top of this made the
mistake of trying to eat artichokes, leaves and all.

"I put them in my mouth," she sobbed, "but I
really couldn't swallow them."

Mother legally adopted Cherry Watson but she
became my child, lived with me, attended Tewkes-
bury School above Hastings, and has been my close
friend all my life. Cherry was married in 1916, has
a delightful house in Bronxville, is the mother of
two fine boys, and— what becomes of years I can't
imagine, I must misplace them somewhere— recently
became a grandmother.

As always, C. F. enormously enjoyed the distinc-
tion of producing his plays in London and he was
enthusiastic about the chances of Love Watches at
the Haymarket; but this turned out to be an unfor-
tunate venture. Instead of bringing over the Ameri-
can company, he substituted very fine British players
for the small parts and the London public took excep-
tion to this. They did not like French adaptations
and they thought the play was without chivalry and
without merit. The critics had retained a certain
affection for me, but all told they hurt us so cruelly
that we did not linger long.

I think this was the season that the Ballet Russe
had its sensational premiere in Paris. Diaghileff
brought over Nijinski and we saw the premiere of
Debussy's The Afternoon of a Faun at the Chatelet,

ALL THAT GLITTERS 95

that vast, magnificent opera house, and Pavlova and
Ida Rubinstein danced.

At this time I met my playwrights M. de Flers
and M. Caillavet, very delightful people indeed, but
I must say that I was most particularly fetched by
the portly and realistic Madame Caillavet, who took
me into her bedroom one afternoon and casually
pointed to a picture of a very pretty woman on her
dressing table. It was a photograph of her husband's
mistress.

"Marie," she said, indifferently. "My husband's
little belle amie, you know."

Ah, the French.

And it was on another trip returning from Paris
that we had the adventure with the hotel fire in
London.

We were staying at the Carlton, getting ready to
sail for New York, when there was a great uproar
one night, an orchestration of yelling, shrieking, and
excitement, along with the jangle of the fire wagons
pulling up at the front doors. Almost everything we
had was packed, we were dining out that night, it
was about six o'clock, and Mother was taking her
bath.

I grabbed the things I thought were most valuable,
bundled Mother into a coat, dripping as she was,
while she fumbled around for what she could save,
and we fled down the corridor, down three flights of
stairs, out into the street, and into the car of a little
Grand Duke who was waiting for us, fire or no fire.

96 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

"Great Heavens, I left my jewelry box upstairs!"
I complained when we were in the automobile.

"No, I brought that," Mother said calmly, handing
it to me. But then, with enormous distress in her
voice: "But I forgot my corsets."

I examined what I had saved.

"Here they are," I said.

Whereupon we embraced each other and congratu-
lated each other on our presence of mind in rescuing
our most valuable possessions. A touching scene.

As it turned out my trunks, all packed, had been
hurried over and carefully kept on the stage of His
Majesty's Theatre next door and were sent over by
the next boat. But I boarded the steamer in high-
heeled pumps, a foulard outfit with a light traveling
coat, no hat, and nothing whatsoever to sleep in. I
was quickly taken care of, though, by Dorothy Don-
nelly, who starred in Ned Sheldon's The Princess
Zim-Zam, and by another helpful actress, Louise
Closser Hale, who lent me the things a girl needs and
which she cannot purchase at the ship's barbershop.

We had lived in rented houses in Yonkers since
arriving in New York. I would go back and forth to
New York "by motor," as we said then. Now Mother
decided that we should live even farther out in the
country. We suddenly acquired thirty-five acres and
an old house near Hastings, and Blanche for a while
ceased to be a watchful mother and dramatic coach
and turned engineer.

She planned roads, bridges, and walls. She had

ALL THAT GLITTERS 97

in contractors and Japanese gardeners by the platoon.
When they gave her prices on things she insisted
that the work could be done for half as much, and
about half the time she was right. It wound up as
Burkely Crest, with a teahouse facing a tennis court,
a swimming pool, Japanese bridges, apple trees and
spacious lawns. I did not know it then, but Burkely
Crest was to be the scene of my happiest and my
most sorrowful moments.

Meantime, my salary with Charles Frohman con-
tinued at $500 a week. This was an excellent salary,
far more than I had made in London. It provided
Mother and me with all we could want, especially
since C. F. paid the bills for my long gloves and
gave me carte blanche with Madame Hayward.

Then Maxine Elliott came to tea one afternoon.
This lovely woman had been my ideal and my idol
since the first time I saw her, and the fact that she
took me into her life was a joy to me.

In after years, when I was not playing, I would
trot all the way over to Brooklyn and wait dutifully
until she was through on the stage, just to see her.
Through her I knew Gertrude Elliott and the Forbes-
Robertsons and so many other interesting and lovely
people.

Maxine was vivid and witty and wise. When
Forbes-Robertson first came over to work in The
Third Floor Back with her, she examined his con-
tract, scornfully tore it up, and tossed it in Lee Shu-
bert's lap— and Lee immediately rewrote the contract
at Maxine's figure. She was like something beautiful

98 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

out of a picture, with lovely hair and raven-winged
eyebrows, but she was so astute that when she en-
tertained at her house in London she was able with-
out the slightest effort to control the conversation
and keep the ball rolling amiably between guests of
all kinds of political beliefs. She even managed with
young Winston Churchill, no mean feat.

In London she was bid to all the most distin-
guished dinner parties. "I may sit below the salt
sometimes, dear, but I'm there," she would say.

And so Maxine came to tea one afternoon.

There was a purpose in Maxine's call on me that
day. She was under contract to the Shuberts, those
remarkable brothers Jake and Lee who had come to
New York out of nowhere and challenged the dy-
nasties of Frohman and Belasco and the theater
combine controlled by Klaw and Erlanger.

Maxine was pussyfooting, but she was also direct.
She began by telling me how wonderful it was to
work for such an astute and generous employer as
Lee Shubert.

"By the way, Billie," she said. "What kind of con-
tract do you have with Frohman? Good contract?"

I had no contract. I had agreed to come over for a
season. The season had turned into a tour, another
play and another tour and had lasted three years.
But I didn't want Maxine to think I was a complete
fool about business.

"Oh," I said, "I have the same arrangement as
Maude Adams has."

Maxine persisted.

ALL THAT GLITTERS 99

"And what is that?"

"No contract," I confessed.

Maxine said that under certain circumstances that
might be an advantage.

"But the money, dear, what does Frohman pay
your

"Five hundred a week," I said proudly.

Maxine gasped.

"Five hundred! Why Billie, that's terrible! Now,
just for your information, I happen to know that Lee
would be happy to give you fifteen hundred dollars
a week and ten per cent of the gross."

Miss Elliott then departed graciously, leaving me
with the unhappy conviction that I was a financial
idiot. I was at the Frohman office first thing next
morning.

C. F.'s manager in charge of money was Alf Hay-
man. I said to him: "Alf, I have been thinking that
I should get a little more money. Living expenses are
going up."

"Why, Billie, aren't you satisfied?"

"Oh yes, Alf, I'm satisfied, but living expenses are
going up-"

"Who's been talking to you?"

"Oh, nobody at all, I was just thinking. Living
expenses are going up and—"

"Who's been talking to you?"

"Well," I said, "everything is getting so much
more expensive, and Maxine Elliott said—"

"So that's it," Alf said. "A Shubert spy. So they're
trying to get you away. How much did they offer?"

100 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

I gulped.

"Maxine said," I mumbled, "Maxine said that the
Shuberts would give me fifteen hundred a week and
ten per cent of the gross."

Alf began to rant around with a face as red as a
geranium. In addition to Ziegfeld whom they de-
spised and Belasco with whom they were quarreling
at the moment, the Frohmans also hated the Shuberts.

"I'll talk to C. F," Alf finally said. "Meantime,
you stay away from the Shuberts— and Maxine El-
liott."

I stayed away. Pretty soon C. F. sent for me.

"This is how we do it," he said. "Give you five
hundred a week to live on. You live on that. Then we
put away a thousand a week for you. Put it in bonds.
Then we give you ten per cent of the gross. But we
put that away too. You will get notification of this
withholding every week."

And that is how I began to make money, thanks to
Maxine Elliott, the most beautiful woman I ever
knew.

9. CARUSO-BARRIE-MAUGHAM

it the end of this book, conveniently arranged
XjL for skipping, I shall put down the casts of the
plays I was in between 1906 and 1930.

At the drop of a hint I will always tell in detail
all about these productions. But it has always seemed
to me that there is nothing so bleak as theatrical
biography play by play; total recall is a good thing
in a Brownie No. 2 or an adding machine but it is a
doubtful quality in an actress. Still, just as all of us
sentimentally respond to certain songs, so do we
recall moments in the theater, sometimes fondly and
sometimes romantically. So I shall set down the plays
for your inspection.

The plays were comedies. Many of them were
taken from the French. Others were by Somerset
Maugham and Sir Arthur Wing Pinero. All of them
were fun for me to do— indeed, I always have fun on
the stage and in the movies and on the radio, and
now comes television, somewhat alarming but prob-
ably more fun than ever. I think my best plays in
those early days were Love Watches and Mrs. Dot,
but Pinero's The Mind the Paint Girl was the most
important. It was a comedy, naturally, but with
tongue in cheek it seriously criticized the social
structure of Great Britain where, at that time, it was

101

102 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

a scandalous thing for an upper-cruster to think of
marrying a girl from musical comedy.

I can describe my roles to you almost in one breath.
Take a lot of my plays. Take sixteen of them. Here
were my stage names:

Mamie

Trixie

Jacqueline

Dot

Colette

Eloise

Lily

Tommy

Nora

Jerry

Isabel

Rose

Violet

Annie

Laura

and Suzanne

Not one of these girls could have murdered her
husband.

It hardly seems possible that Trixie, Jacqueline
or Colette could have had husbands, or any other
such routine impedimenta. They were gay girls who
moved lightly through society with bright lines to
say, expensively gowned and accompanied always
by the handsomest and most skillful leading men

CARUSO— BARRIE— MAUGHAM

103

Charles Frohman could buy. These plays were for
fun, but they were produced very seriously: C. F.
superintended every detail. Once when he was unable
to walk he had himself carried into the theater on
a stretcher day after day to make sure that every-
thing was done with the eclat he demanded, and in
good taste. I went from town to town and from play
to play, an exceedingly happy young actress.

After the trouble with my arm, we returned to
Boston with Love Watches. I met an extraordinary
man. He was the great romantic tenor of the
Metropolitan Opera and his name was Enrico
Caruso.

Caruso began coming to the theater every night
when he was not singing in the opera, and every
night there would come hurtling down from his
gilded box a vast bouquet of American Beauty
roses which were the fashion then, to the amusement
of the audience. I suspect that if our play had not
been a good play those proper Bostonians would have
come anyway, just to see Caruso throw the roses.

Enrico would send back notes almost as flowery
as his bouquets, but I avoided meeting him for a
while. It was not long, though, before we were in-
troduced at a luncheon thoughtfully arranged by a
mutual friend. Immediately after that he began to
call on me at the old Touraine and to fall on one
knee and ask me to marry him. That man, I promise
you, was very impetuous. He not only played in
opera, he lived it.

104 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

"Leesten, leetle ba-bee," he would plead. "I seeng
you the most lovely aria in all music." And he would
fill his great chest and pour forth golden notes in
such crescendo that the whole apartment trembled.
He would sing anywhere. Once, when he was smitten
with overwhelming passion for an unknown and
considerably startled girl in the midst of Grand Cen-
tral Station, he opened up with an aria there and
caused many commuters to miss their trains.

We often took long walks along the Charles. There
Caruso would declare his adoration; but first, he
would test his "Mi-mi." He had to know if his "Mi-mi"
was there before any other consideration.

Then he would announce:

"Ah, my Mi-mi she is there. Billee, I love you."

We had many suppers together. Caruso loved
spaghetti, of course, and delighted to arrange parties
at which he would consume enormous quantities be-
tween his declarations of passion. Caruso was always
accompanied by his entourage, like European royalty
or an American crooner, and his people were, of
course, mostly Italian. My entourage would consist
chiefly of Harvard boys, embryonic brain-trusters,
who would object violently to my going out with
anyone else; they had their own ideas about parties.
But Caruso insisted, volubly brushing aside objec-
tions as if they did not exist, and away we would go.

Our patient special waiter would beam at us. "Ah,
I see we are fourteen tonight," he would grin. Four-
teen or forty, it made no whit of difference to Enrico
Caruso. He made love and ate spaghetti with equal

CARUSO— BARRIE— MAUGHAM 105

skill and no inhibitions. He would propose marriage
several times each evening.

Naturally, I did not take him seriously. I treated
him as if he were a great, mischievous baby and said
"Pouf" to his rather overpowering brand of love-
making. I am afraid that I mistreated this great artist.
My! Suppose I had taken him seriously!

But I was giving marriage no place in my life at
that time. In after years, though, I have thought
very fondly of Caruso for proposing it.

After Love Watches, C. F. gave me my choice of
two plays, both of which he had planned for Marie
Tempest. There now, my friends, was an actress, and
an actress of the really elegant tradition. Marie was
the first actress dressed by the famous Madame Hay-
ward, and she was the kind for whom, literally, red
carpets were laid from carriage to stage door so that
not one fleck of city dust might touch her slippers.
The Marquise, a play I did years later, was also
written for the beautiful red-headed Tempest.

Of the two plays, I chose Mrs. Dot, and I have
forgotten what the other one was. With Mrs. Dot
came those three fine gentlemen and fine actors,
Julian L'Estrange, who later married Constance Col-
lier, Basil Hallam, and Frederick Kerr. Julian was,
I am sure, the handsomest leading man an actress
could wish for, with his beautiful small head, black
hair, and arrogant chin. And Basil was an Apollo
who was also excruciatingly funny. C. F. took my
Hallam away from me after the first year of Mrs. Dot
because he feared the truth of rumors that Basil and

106 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

I were planning to leave him and do our own plays
in London.

Basil was the one who so shocked the ladies of
the hotel when we were stopping in Boston. Every
morning he would get up early, don his running
trunks and sweater with the wide Charterhouse col-
ors and descend by the elevator to the public parks,
where he would trot for miles. The ladies were in-
censed, and reported to the management that they
would not ride in the same elevator with this shock-
ing young man attired only in his underclothes; and
so our Basil was banished to the freight elevator.
After that he made his entrances and exits with the
laundry.

I am sure that many playgoers remember Basil
Hallam. He was an exceptional actor and would be
renowned today, I am confident, but he was killed
in World War I when his parachute failed to open
over enemy territory.

Frederick Kerr performed a brief scene in this play
that almost drove audiences out of their minds. With
enormous gusto, he used to prepare a Rhine wine
cup on stage, using silver things ceremoniously
fetched by the butler, peeling a lemon carefully,
hanging it just so on the flagon, examining the label
of the bottle, and pouring the wine with a tantal-
izing gurgle. After a few moments of this, audiences
would gulp and perish of thirst.

Fred wore a Prince Albert in the play and was in-
ordinately proud of the fact that he had owned it
for forty years. Before every entrance he would

CARUSO— BARRIE— MAUGHAM 107

stroke its lapels affectionately and call on the com-
pany to witness what a marvelous frock coat he pos-
sessed. During scenes in which we sat together on
a sofa while other actors said their lines, we would
carry on a make-believe conversation, the burden of
which was always Fred's complaints about his dinner
or Fred's diatribes against thieves who snatched
bulbs from his dressing room. But he invariably man-
aged to make these complaints appear to be gallant
persiflage to the audience. Actors, I always say, are
unusual people.

With Mrs. Dot I met Somerset Maugham, its au-
thor. Today, Mr. Maugham lets on that he is a "very
old party," but judging from the few happy times
when I have been fortunate enough to see him these
past years, he is still a very handsome man. He was
known and is known now as a British writer, but to
me he has always seemed French. Indeed, he was
born in France and learned French before he spoke
English; and he was Parisian instead of Bond Street
in elegance: always with his swallowtails and striped
trousers, piping on his coat, smart gloves, a stick,
beautifully made shoes, a gray top hat with a black
band, and his briskly clipped mustache. And he had
great smoldering brown eyes. Ah yes, Mr. Maugham,
so you had, and I was a little in love with you, sir.

Later it was Willie Maugham who took me by the
hand literally, and led me to my fate. But at that
time I was chiefly grateful to him for a fine play—
which, incidentally, he had written somewhat cyni-
cally.

108 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Mr. Maugham, as you probably know, has lived a
well-planned career, turning from one form of litera-
ture to another with deliberate skill. He began with
novels, then did a few light plays which made his
fortune. His next move was to write more serious
plays, but London producers feared these would be
unpopular. In protest, Maugham wrote Mrs. Dot as
an audience-pleaser, custom-made and tailored for
Marie Tempest. I appreciated my good luck in get-
ting this play and in following the celebrated Miss
Tempest in it, but on the whole I was lightrhearted
about it; possibly it was my very lightheartedness
that contributed to our success. Our play was a hit.
We ran for something more than two years in
America.

Sometime later when I was in London, Willie gave
me luncheon at his delightful home in Mayfair. When
it was over he took me to the fireplace in the hall
and showed me a small framed picture, one we had
made as a souvenir of the two-hundred-and-fiftieth
performance of Mrs. Dot.

"Do you know who that interesting young woman
is?" he asked. "Well, let me tell you. That is the
woman who bought me this house."

I am told that he enjoyed this joke and frequently
pointed to my picture as "the woman who bought
me a house." Mrs. Dot, of course, did make a great
deal of money for all of us.

During these trips to Europe, which we made
every summer, I always took Mother to a spa for
several weeks for her rheumatism or whatever in-

CARUSO— BARRIE— MAUGHAM 109

teresting ailment she had collected during the winter.
We went frequently to Carlsbad, that beautiful spot
where we would walk in the park and buy those
delicious little biscuits from the biscuit man, or nib-
ble the Carlsbad ham— food for the gods. If C. F.
happened to be in London he would often run over
to Paris, if only for a lunch or dinner, while I was
there.

Often, James M. Barrie would accompany him and
we would dine at some charming spot, C. F.'s pref-
erence being Armenonville in the Bois, supposed
to have the most delicious food in the world. C. F.
loved sweets with an uncontrollable passion. In New
York he and Clyde Fitch used to eat pastries in
one another's apartments, being ashamed to con-
sume as many as they wanted in public. In the Bois,
C. F. would often pile one delicacy on top of an-
other—watermelon, ice cream, strawberries, musk-
melon and cantaloupe, for instance. But the real
inspiration of the trips to Paris with Barrie was a
game they played.

Barrie, whom I had just met at this time, was a
Scot, of course, but without the brogue of the pro-
fessional Scotsman. He talked in a soft drawl, almost
a purr. He was shy and sweet, always, but he played
this odd game with Charles Frohman.

We would line up in chairs at our table on the
sidewalk, stationing ourselves strategically just where
the ladies alighted from their carriages, and there we
would sit, staring at the ladies' legs. The gentlemen
would pull their large black hats low over their eyes,

110 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

visorlike, and fix their view on the curb where the
girls alighted from their fiacres. They could see no
higher than their ankles and the object of the game
was to guess from this evidence whether they were
ladies, cocottes, blondes, brunettes, show girls, or
dowagers. Mr. Frohman, that worldly-wise observer,
seldom missed. But poor Barrie, with all his sym-
pathy and deep understanding of the feminine heart
—when it came to judging women by their ankles
he never seemed to get things right.

There is another incident with James M. Barrie
which I shall always cherish. One afternoon after
a walk we returned to his study, that small, tidy,
book-lined and somewhat darkish study where so
many fine books and plays had been written, for a
cup of tea. After a short talk, he was helping me on
with my jacket when all of a sudden, but very quietly,
he said, "May I kiss you?"

"Why yes, of course," I said. I was not used to
being asked.

So Barrie kissed me, gently and quickly, about an
inch south of my left ear. It was a peck, a frugal
little Scotch kiss.

Then he pulled me to the door and before I knew
it I was in my brougham and on my way home and
Barrie had scurried back to the safety of his study
and his books.

The Mind the Paint Girl by Pinero had not been
a success in London. Just the reverse. And in looking
back I am surprised that Mr. Frohman considered

CARUSO— BARRIE— MAUGHAM 111

doing it in America. But it was a magnificent part for
a girl and, of course, there was no objection here, as
there had been in London, to a chorus girl's marrying
into the peerage. Here it made just an excellent
vehicle, with a chance to wear ravishing clothes.
This play is very strong, with a strong theater atmos-
phere; the second act is supposed to take place back
stage at the Gayety Theater in London, and one of
the chief characters is supposed to be George Ed-
wardes himself. All the girls and their beaux were
take-offs of popular people in what would be called
cafe society today.

All the young men were brought over from London,
and that magnificent actor, H. E. Herbert, played the
faithful man who loved Lily Parradell, the chorus
girl— me. Incidentally, one of the pretty young ac-
tresses in my play was Jeanne Eagels, to whom no
one paid much attention then except to observe that
she was lovely to look at and pleasant to have around.
A few years later we heard a great deal about her
in Somerset Maugham's Rain.

Our leading man left us shortly after the opening.
He was replaced by Shelley Hull, a delightful per-
son. Shelley was a graceful actor, lithe and hand-
some, one of the first to play with the light and
natural touch. He was whimsical, sometimes faun-
like, much like a young, blond Faversham. With him
was his wonderful young wife, a girl who was happy
just being his wife, giving no indication of her great
mastery of the art of acting that she later discovered
and made known to the theater as Josephine Hull.

112 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

I think it was the year of The Mind the Paint Girl
that something dawned on me, something of what
the theater could really mean. Perhaps it was just
that I was becoming more experienced, a little older,
or perhaps working with Dion Boucicault, who di-
rected us, started a flame kindling, an urge to play
some of the finer, harder, more glorious parts. My
rise to stardom had been so sudden, and— believe
me, I am a modest woman and I say this in all mod-
esty—so easy, everything gay and joyous and fun,
that I had not considered what I might do later, or
if I could make great progress, or if I had talents
worth trying to develop as an artist. C. F. picked
my plays for me. They were always right and I did
them without question.

I think a great deal of this was inspired directly
by Dion Boucicault himself. I saw in Boucicault the
same artistic integrity, the same care for detail, the
same respect for the drama, that I had known in
Hawtrey. Boucicault was a master craftsman in
every department of the stage, and a wonderfully
attractive person in his own right. His wife, Irene
Vanbrugh, was one of the best comediennes of the
day, incidentally. Another thing inspired me. I had
enjoyed a great success as Lily, and I had been
accepted for the first time as a dramatic actress. As
I have admitted before, up to now the critics had
regarded me as a cream puff. Now, with an adult
play by a wise and witty author, I had accomplished
something really worthwhile. I became aware that I
was more highly regarded in professional circles.

CARUSO— BARRIE— MAUGHAM 113

Alfred Sutro, one of England's finest playwrights,
saw the opening night of The Mind the Paint Girl,
in which Boucicault had made me work and repeat
and rehearse just as Hawtrey used to do with me,
and he was impressed. Boucicault's method was
quite different from Frohman's, with all Frohman's
attention to detail, for with C. F. the star herself
could never do wrong.

And so when the great Sutro immediately an-
nounced that he wanted to write a play for me and
couldn't get at it quickly enough, I was enormously
set up and encouraged and determined to do the
best I could from that minute on.

10. THE MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE
STAIRS

The Mind the Paint Girl was my most important
play and I would like to have shown myself in
it all over America and parts of Canada. But the
very care with which Charles Frohman mounted this
production made this impossible. C. F. had imported
heavy wooden scenery from London, very beautiful
but impossible to take on tour and set up in different
theaters. So we played our fine run of 136 perform-
ances in New York, made a few out-of-town engage-
ments, warehoused the handsome scenery, and closed
the show.

I was eager of course, now that I could make some
serious representations about being a dramatic ac-
tress, to do another worthwhile play. It was impor-
tant for me then, and I knew it, to attempt another
job of hard, exacting work under a director like Dion
Boucicault. But this was impossible. Charles Froh-
man simply did not have that kind of play for me.
He called me in and explained this, offering me a
frolicsome comedy called The Amazons.

I argued with C. F. for the first time in my life,
but Frohman was sincerely offering me the best he
had at that moment and it seemed wiser to accept it

114

THE MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS 115

than be idle. And. of course, we had a great deal of
fun with The Amazons.

This was all about a family of girls who had dis-
appointed their father by not beins boys. Miriam
Clements was brought over from England to plav
the older sister, which she did elegantly, and we
were— I think— very say and cute in our £\tu suits,
hoydenish and scampering, pretending to be bovs.

Jerome Kern wrote the music for The Amazons.
and often he would drop in to sit at a small piano
in the wings strumming a special arrangement which
sounded like mandolin music while Shellev Hull
pretended to play on stage and while I sans "My
Ota Hiti Lady." We enjoyed each other, the play
was frothy and apparently what audiences expected
of Billie Burke, and it made money. But it did not
advance me one inch in the direction in which I
wanted to go dramatically.

So I was elated when C. F. save me The Land
of Promise for next season. This was a serious play
by Somerset Maugham. All of us thought that it
would be extremely good for me and Maugham him-
self came over from England in the fall to supervise
rehearsals.

In The Land of Promise I played the part of a
companion to an elderlv ladv. Upon her death the
girl is left penniless. She seeks employment in Can-
ada, and in order to set work she marries, as house-
keeper and wife in name only, a hard-bitten young
farmer whose crop is destroyed by mustard weed,
which was then the scour se of Canadian farmers.

116 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

like locusts or grasshoppers in some sections. In the
end, as you have anticipated, the farmer chooses not
to respect the wife-in-name-only clause of the em-
ployment contract.

This was a beautifully written but dreary kind of
play for me. My costumes were not fetching— one
black dress and another of a particularly ugly blue—
and the problems of Canadian farmers did not in-
terest New York audiences. It was full of integrity
and all that, largely because Somerset Maugham
refused to be awed by Charles Frohman when C. F.
wanted to lighten the second act, and it was not,
in box-office terms, a failure. But the change of
character was perhaps too sudden for me. Possibly
Crystal Heme or some other established dramatic
actress could have carried this play, but I could not.
( Many years later, to be sure, I starred in the motion
picture version made by Famous Players-Lasky, with
Thomas Meighan, and still later Tom made another
highly successful motion picture from it starring
himself. )

I was dismayed and saddened by this experience,
but C. F. was cheerful as usual. He never mourned
over spilt theatrical milk.

"Do another one," he said, and immediately trotted
out the script of Jerry, a grand play by Catherine
Chisholm Cushing, who wrote Topsy and Eva for
the Duncan sisters, among other talented works.
We started rehearsals immediately, even before the
close of The Land of Promise. But Jerry, for all its
merit, was another lightweight comedy. It was good,

THE MAX AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS 11,

but as;ain I was disappointed, and this time I was
beginning to feel completely frustrated and bewil-
dered.

I had seen a great deal of Somerset Maugham
durins; the run of Mrs. Dot. He enjoyed dancing, and
we would go out often on small parties with Marine
Elliott and the Forbes-Robertsons. Forbes-Robert-
son was famous for one of the wisest Hamlets ever
played, but he danced the fox trot expertly, and so
did Willie Maugham. Willie was in New York during
die holidays, during the fall and winter of 1913, and
so of course he was a guest at a partv I gave on
New Years Eve for the Forbes-Robertsons, who
were about to sail for Europe. As a matter of fact,
Willie was my escort.

As my party broke up. someone suggested— I think
it was Victor Kiraly. my personal manager, that
short, extremelv charming and exceedingly faithful
friend— that we drop in at the Sixtv Clubs costume
ball. We were not members and it was late, about
2 a. m.. 1914. but Victor made a telephone call and
reported tiiat our friends would be glad to see us.
So over we went to die party at the Hotel Astor.

One of die guests at tiiis ball, I learned later, had
arrived m his favorite costume, a fantastic tramp
getup with a false nose, whiskers, and a battered
bicycle. He had had a dispute with Lillian Lorraine,
who had gone home. He had then taken off his cos-
tume, dressed in evening clothes, and had been trv-
ing to get Miss Lorraine on the telephone. This had
happened just before we came in, and die ex-tramp

118 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

was standing at the foot of the red-carpeted grand
staircase of the Hotel Astor ballroom when we
entered.

Possibly I can permit myself to say "made an en-
trance," for no actress in her right mind would at-
tempt less in descending a great staircase on the arm
of Somerset Maugham.

At the foot of the stairs stood this man.

I mistook him for an Italian at first and glanced
quickly to see if he wore a purple riband across his
shirt front, or a decoration in his buttonhole, like a
diplomat. He had a Mephistophelean look, his eye-
brows and his eyelids lifting, curved upward, in the
middle. Slim and tall and immaculate in full eve-
ning dress, he was in black and white contrast to
the rest of the costumed party, and so— and for who
knows what other reasons— I noticed him at once.
Willie Maugham and I swept on and began to dance.

Freddie Zimmerman, a society figure whose father
was important in show business because he owned
so many theater buildings, was marshaling the Paul
Joneses and he called one almost immediately, after
Willie Maugham and I had danced together for a
few minutes. At the moment when Freddie called
the Paul Jones, there was my tall dark man. He took
me in his arms and began to dance, expertly and
very smoothly, while I chattered. (Perhaps I should
have put this in before, long before. I always
chatter. )

"Lovely party," I said.

THE MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS 119

"Mmmmm," said mv partner.

I was convinced now that he was a foreigner, one
who probably spoke very little English, so I made
more conversation. He responded in monosyllables,
apparently unable to talk. He never said a word, but
he touched me with his knee, a little signal to turn.
I thought this was an odd thing to do but I rather
liked it.

There was another Paul Jones very soon and there
was my dark man again. Another Paul Jones and my
man. Without a word. I cannot be sure, but it seems
to me that I never found my escort again. We seemed
to dance Paul Joneses for the rest of the evening.

As it grew later, Victor found me, though. He
kept trotting up to whisper, "Matinee tomorrow. Got
to go. Late. Miss Burke! Please!"

Victor would pull out his watch and point, but
we kept on dancing.

Finally, someone spoke to my partner in passing.

"Why, hello, Flo," a man said. "Say, I thought
you'd gone home."

I had never seen Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., before. I
had never seen his Ziegfeld Follies, the first of which
had opened the same year I came from London to
do My Wife with John Drew. By now his shows were
world-famous, with such stars as Xora Bayes, Sophie
Tucker, Mae Murray, Leon Errol, Anne Pennington,
Fannie Brice, Bert Williams, and George White. And
I had somehow gathered the impression that Flo
Ziegfeld himself was a dour man with a beard.

120 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

I understood then why the guest who was made
up as the Empress Josephine had been staring at us.
She was utterly beautiful, this Empress, strange and
dark, with enormous jealous eves which followed
us around the floor. She was Anna Held, who had
been Ziegfeld's wife for fifteen years and had just
divorced him.

As I say, I had never met Flo Ziegfeld, but I
knew all about him. Everybody in New York knew
about him. His reputation with women was ex-
tremelv dangerous. Flo was, I shall put it, cavalier
about women. He was as famous for this in New
York, I suppose, as he was for his Follies. He had
just left Anna Held and he was supposed to be in
love with Lillian Lorraine.

To my confusion about everything else was now
added a new kind of complete and bewildering con-
fusion inspired by Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. I was, and I
knew it instantlv, desperately and foolishlv falling in
love with this strange man. I felt a sudden envelop-
ing oneness with him. It seemed that he had danced
me into a glimmering world of swirling emotion, a
new countrv full of awe and delight for me, yet un-
known and frightening.

Yes, let me put it down again, of course I knew
Flo Ziegfeld was a dangerous man. I had known that
before I met him, and I felt the impact of his threat
and his charm at once. But even if I had known then
precisely what tortures and frustrations were in store
for me during the next eighteen vears because of this
man, I should have kept right on falling in love.

THE MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS 121

During mv next matinee I received some flowers
from him. Thev were not like the elaborate and con-
ventional flowers I was used to getting, for they were
delicatelv and smartly boxed in a cone shape by
Thorley in a way I had never seen, and they formed
a tiny Colonial bouquet, showing the utmost taste
and care in their selection. The man who ordered
that bouquet was, of course, probably the most skill-
ful man in the world in all the arts of good taste
and grace. And so I invited Flo to a small party I
was giving within a few days and we began to get
better acquainted.

A day or so later I met him on Fifth Avenue. I
was getting out of my car, wearing a sable jacket
and dragging a chinchilla coat.

Flo's eyes glinted.

"Well, Miss Billie Burke," he said, eyeing the furs,
"I see you are the most extravagant person in the
wrorld, next to me."

"I understand, sir, that you once upon a time
hitched four zebras to a cart and drove them down
the Champs Elysees, scattering flowers and bottles
to the midinettes. Is that correct?" I asked.

"Even- word of it," Flo said. "But I never carried
two fur coats at once."

The next time I saw Flo was when he called on
me at Burkely Crest one Sunday afternoon. Mv but-
ler, a most proper person who alwavs looked down
his nose at everybody, looked down it at Flo, and
after his visit had extended until darkness stalked

122 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

into the living room and inquired grandly: "And
will the gentleman be staying for supper?"

It turned out that the gentleman would be staying.

Later, Flo said to me, "When that guy came in
and asked me if I was staying for supper, I made
up my mind then that I was going to stay at
Hastings."

During the run of The Land of Promise Mother
and I would frequently have Saturday dinner after
the matinee with Flo in his apartment at the An-
sonia. Flo was totally different from anyone I had
ever met, so easy and relaxing, serving his little din-
ners with such charm that I was always a little
startled by him, if that isn't too much of a paradox
to accept. He did everything gracefully. For one
thing, he concentrated on courting my mother in-
stead of me.

"I am going to take your mother to see someone
else," he would announce, and off the two would go
to the theater— a whirl for Mother, and she was com-
pletely captured. Flo would send her gifts, a dozen
pint bottles of pink champagne, or pate de foie gras,
or out-of-season fruit. He was a connoisseur of all
beautiful and rare things.

He made it difficult for me to act in The Land
of Promise because in this play I was supposed to be
virtually a starveling. And there I was, coming on
stage nightly, replete and about to burst from Flo's
pressed ducks, wines, and sauces. In some ways, I
hold that my performance as a hungry girl that season
was one of the great tours de force of the theater.

THE MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS 123

Mother's attitude toward Flo? You have begun
to guess it. But Mother faced up to everything. She
said to me :

"I think you have to weigh his reputation and
consider how much it would bother you afterwards.
Frohman is against this, but certainly the Frohman
office has been pretty dictatorial about it all. I think
you are going to have to make up your mind about
what you want to do with the rest of your life. And
7 think Flo could do things quicker for you than the
Frohman office."

Frankly, I did not agree with that last sentence.
But I was lost, hopelessly in love, and I was frus-
trated about my career. I had dreamed of myself
as a new Rejane, but now she had disappeared be-
hind a screen. I never saw her again. But Flo was
there instead.

Flo would say: "Marry me. Marry me now."

Flo would say: "I can make you happy, and I can
make you happy in your work."

But I had a feeling that this was something I had
to control. I felt that I could not go on seeing him
constantly, for something weakened within me every
time he proposed. And I had two things to consider,
my own happiness and my career. You learn, after
a while, when you begin to grow up, what an enor-
mous difference there is between mere happiness and
your career.

It is at times like this, to be sure, when the prob-
able and improbable, the important and the trivial,
line themselves up out of focus, and a woman is

124 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

rushed and confused, that desperate and unlikely
things are almost certain to take precedence over
judgment and caution. It does not matter that you
think things through with the utmost logic. Possibly
—and I think I shall suggest this quite seriously—
possibly this is a provision of Nature in the make-up
of women. A time comes. They fall in love. I fell
in love with Flo Ziegfeld.

But all the same, I was trying to comply with
Frohman's wishes. C. F. bitterly and consistently
opposed my seeing Flo. Moreover, it was certainly
unwise to become involved, with a new play in prep-
aration— Jerry— but Flo Ziegfeld kept turning up as
we finished our New York run of The Promised
Land, went on the road with it, and began rehears-
ing the new play.

Flo played the ardent admirer to the hilt, but I
believe he was as amazed as I was. This was a dif-
ferent setup, something new for the adventurer.

Charles Frohman called me to his office as soon
as he heard I was seeing Ziegfeld.

"Stop it," he said. "Ruin your career. Mustn't
marry. Drop you if you do. Bad man. Also, he can't
produce plays."

Oh, I laughed it off.

"I haven't the slightest intention of marrying any-
body," I promised Frohman that spring.

But we continued to see each other, although
most of our meetings were clandestine. Some of them
were in Grant's tomb.

Now, I suppose other sweethearts have met and

THE MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS 125

kissed in the General's sepulcher, Columbia Uni-
versity and the Barnard College girls being nearby,
but I dare suggest that this was the first time that
a producer and the star of a Broadway play ever
had to meet there. I would drive down from Hastings
in the late afternoon and there would be Flo impa-
tiently stomping up and down inside the chilly ren-
dezvous, glarings because he was sure Frohman's
henchmen were lurking in the bushes.

Charles Frohman muttered even- invidious thing
he could think of about Flo, but although Ziegfeld
despised Frohman just as bitterly, I recall only one
thins; he ever said about him.

"Ha," he said, "did you ever see Frohman eat
ovsters?"

Harassed as we were, trying to escape newspaper
reporters and Charles Frohman, Flo and I finally
found that Sherry's was almost deserted by the time
I grot out of the theater and that we could meet there

o

unnoticed. I hadn't decided to marry him, but I was
very close to a decision then. One evening when we
were having a little supper we were interrupted by
a Philadelphia publisher, an old friend of Flo's who
was feelino; no inhibitions. He came uncertainly over
to our table, Flo courteously introduced us, and this
wretched creature said:

"Man, oh man, Flo, I gotta say this— vou certainly
can pick 'em, and bov, do you know how to dress
em!

I was never so furious in my life. I got up, rushed
from the room, flew out the door to mv car, leaving

126 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Flo without a word, hurried home and refused to
talk to him for a week.

Both Charles Frohman and Alf Hayman were
firmly determined to stop me from seeing Flo Zieg-
feld. One afternoon in midwinter, when snow cov-
ered the ground, both of them came to see me at
Burkely Crest. (I am not sure they actually came
to see me. I think they came primarily to learn if
Flo was there.)

I was upstairs. My butler showed them into the
sun parlor, where they declined to remove their
coats. Frohman was short and round and bulging
in a great black coat down to his ankles, and Hay-
man, tall, heavy in his long black coat down to his
ankles.

As they leaned on the billiard table smoking their
large cigars and tossing the billiard balls slowly back
and forth by hand my mother came down and asked
if they had come to see me.

"Oh, just passing by. Dropped in," said Frohman.

"Very well, I will call Billie," Mother said.

"I think you had better come down, dear," she
told me. "I think there are two detectives down-
stairs. Named Frohman and Hayman," she added.

When I came down to the sun parlor they were
still leaning over the table slowly clicking the bil-
liard balls, still wearing their enormous coats. In the
sunroom were palms and ferns and flowers and a
dozen or so cockatoos, parrots and canaries in cages
or on perches, and these two angry men in their hot
coats made an incongruous scene in this tropical

THE MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS 127

setting, with the bright white snow shining in
through the windows.

"You think Flo is here, don't you," I said.

Frohman spun a ball viciously across the table.
"This has got to stop," he said.

In moments like this Charles Frohman was not
my warm and understanding friend. All humor went
out of his eyes. His shoulders hunched forward and
he glowered.

The billiard balls were going back and forth rap-
idly now.

"He is still in love with Lorraine," Alf Hayman
said.

"He still sees Anna Held," said Frohman. "But
they are not divorced."

They were throwing the balls hard now. One of
them dropped to the floor. The canaries were al-
ready chirping hysterically. A cockatoo began to
screech and two of the parrots began to yell.

"Not divorced from Held. And he still sees Lillian
Lorraine. Both those women live at the same hotel.
What do you think of that?" Alf Hayman demanded.

I did not know what to say and I don't know now
what I did manage to say. But as Charles Frohman
scolded me and attacked me, angry and red-faced,
with the birds screeching and those balls knocking
against the table, I defended Flo and I defended
myself the best I could and I knew that whatever
they thought and whatever they said my love for
Flo was none of their concern. This was something
that was mine.

128 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

"And do you understand that if you marry Zieg-
feld Mr. Frohman will produce no more plays for
you? The Frohman office will have nothing to do
with you. You will be ruined." This from Alf Hayman.

They told me Ziegfeld had no money.

They said that he would make love to a woman
for six months, then drop her and break her heart.
They said I was a fool to go on with Ziegfeld. They
said they had another good play, two good plays,
coming up, and they reminded me that this would
make up for our bad luck the past season.

But I said, "You won't let me see Flo Ziegfeld
normally. I have to sneak around and see him. If
I could go to luncheon with him or to a matinee
with him like any other girl, things might be dif-
ferent. But you make all this fuss. You make me
meet him in odd places. If you treated this as you
have some of my other flirtations that never meant
anything, perhaps I would be what you call more
sensible about it."

I reminded Frohman and Hayman that I had kept
my word. I had promised them that I would work for
five years without getting married and I had done it.
I told them I had a right to do now whatever I
wanted to do.

I told them that I wasn't at all sure I wanted to
be married to Flo Ziegfeld. I told them I would listen
to all they had to say when they were calmer and
that I would bear in mind whatever they suggested.

"But your coming here today, sneaking out here
like this just to see if Flo is with me, is an awful

THE MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS 129

thing and a frightful thing. Here are your hats, gen-
tlemen. You already have your coats on."

The billiard balls stopped clicking and they left.
It was warm and peaceful inside and the birds were
quiet.

I think this strange argument told me much more
clearly and much more convincingly what it might
have taken me far longer to think out for myself. It
told me how deeply I wanted Flo Ziegfeld.

But I did, with puzzled tears, make one final at-
tempt to break off with him. During the run of The
Mind the Paint Girl I had had some blue notepaper
printed up with in my dressing room in darker blue
in the upper right-hand corner. This was for fun, but
on this stationery I wrote Flo three short letters tell-
ing him we had to stop. In the third I said, "I have
to go on with my play. I think above all things that
I have to be true to my work in the theater. I want
so terribly to be a good actress. This is my last good-
by."

After that note Flo came to the theater back stage
the next night, probably after bribing his way in, and
waited until I consented, prim and frightened, to
sit straight-backed in a gilt chair and listen to what
he had to say. It seemed, he argued, that I owed him
a more extensive explanation. He took me out for
supper.

"I got your note," he said. "This seems pretty defin-
ite.

He reached in his pocket and showed me his
steamship ticket.

130 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

"I have my reservation and I am sailing tomorrow."

I was blank for a moment and then I stammered.
"Oh, you don't have to sail so soon. Sail next week."

Flo narrowed his dark eyes at me. "But you said
this was good-by," he said.

And then he added, "I would like to get married
tomorrow."

I fluttered and made the usual objections. I said
I had no clothes, and I said I would have to ask my
mother.

"We'll talk to your mother," Flo said.

So we drove up to Hastings after the performance^
his car trailing mine, and awakened my patient
mother.

That remarkable woman regarded us both as a
couple of children.

"Now what have you two decided?" she asked
calmly.

"We want to be married," I squeaked.

"I gathered that," she said. "It's the best thing for
you to do. I think Flo will be a wonderful husband
and I think you will be a very happy girl. And I
know it will make me very happy."

I was frantic and frightened the next day. We had
agreed to meet at Sherry's and drive over to Hoboken
after the matinee for the ceremony, all with great
secrecy. We were eloping, actually eloping, along
with my mother— from Charles Frohman.

Between every scene of that Saturday matinee I
tried on dresses from Lichtenstein's while my two
maids fumbled and squealed. At one point I at-

THE MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS 131

tempted to get Flo on the telephone to call it all off,
but I kept right on trying on dresses. Flo, that wily
person, hid himself so successfully that I never could
reach him to cancel the wedding.

And so according to our hastily made arrangements
Mother picked me up at the theater after the mat-
inee as she had done hundreds of times before, and
we drove down the Avenue to Sherry's, and there
was Flo looking quite serious and enormously re-
lieved. We drove over to Hoboken and were married
in the little back room of a parsonage. It was what
was known in those days as the rummage room,
crammed and disorderly with baby carriages and
cribs, old paint buckets and stepladders.

Our minister was as confused as we were. "And
now, Flo," he would say to me, "you stand here."

"He's Flo, I'm Billie," I would say.

"Oh, all right, then, you stand here, Bill," he would
say to Flo. And Flo would correct him.

"I'm Flo, she's Bill— I mean Billie."

But he married us and I am quite sure it was legal.

I never knew that a ferry boat churning its solemn,
drifting way across the Hudson River could be the
most romantic thing in the world. The air was still,
the sun was setting, its burnished glow silhouetting
the dark skyscrapers, and a little man with a concer-
tina played Neapolitan love songs in counterpoint
with the lapping wavelets of the Hudson and the
mellow hoots of the tugboats. And we leaned over
the rail and Flo put his arms around me and said,
"Is my wife happy?"

132 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

We were back in the rush and clangor of Manhat-
tan by six o'clock and had our wedding dinner party
at the old Brevoort Hotel. Of course, I had to make
Flo leave me before I returned to the theater, and
how I got into my costume for the first act is still an
insoluble mystery to me. How I read my lines for
that performance is another mystery. But I remem-
ber one detail.

A few weeks before my marriage Charles Frohman
came into my dressing room and hung his soft gray
hat on a hook. It was a funny little hat which he
liked to fold up and carry in his pocket.

"I am going to London/' he said. "I am going to
leave my hat. To remind you not to get married.
Don't be foolish while I am gone."

Between the second and third acts that evening I
looked up and saw Charles Frohman's funny little hat
still hanging on its hook, and I was sad for a moment,
hoping that I hadn't hurt him too much.

For our honeymoon we went to Long Beach, and
my mother and Flo's father and mother accompanied
us. For the life of me I cannot possibly recall how it
was that our parents were with us. Flo's father and
mother were not at our wedding, unless I was com-
pletely bemused, but I think they had dinner with
us at the Brevoort and I know they went with us to
Long Beach. It was Easter Sunday and we were all
gay and happy and confused together.

The story of our marriage did not break in the
New York papers until two days later, Monday morn-
ing, April 13, 1914. We shared the front page with

THE MAN AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIBS 133

an account of the execution at Sing Sing of Lefty
Louis, Gyp the Blood, Dago Frank and Whitey
Lewis, who murdered the gambler Rosenthal.

"You see what an important man you are married
to," Flo said. "Not even gangsters keep me off the
front page."

Charles Frohman heard about our marriage at
once. He sent me a cable, the last word I ever had
from him. His message said: send me my hat.

I never saw him again. Frohman had returned to
New York once more after leaving me his hat, but
had then sailed again for Europe. With the end only
a few moments away he quoted the great line his
old friend Barrie wrote in Peter Pan: "Death must be
an awfully big adventure."

C. F. had sailed on the Lusitania.

11. PRELUDE TO FANTASIA

We began our married life between a matinee and
evening performance, honeymooned over a
week end, and made our first home in a hotel. Many
a fine marriage, of course, has been founded with
even more haste and with fewer resources, but our
way of life from then on was almost a dramatization
of the troubles and doubts that attend nearly all
theatrical unions. I mean to say that it is an ex-
ceedingly difficult thing for two careers to occupy
the same bedroom.

I have read somewhere that marriage is the quick-
est way to get acquainted— but this is surely an
aphorism coined by a hopeful spinster. Marriage,
I should say, is a relationship beginning with love
and passion which if persisted in may eventually
ripen into understanding and even into enduring
friendship.

Be that as it may, I was in love, and at the same
time I was awed. I knew at once that as Mrs. Florenz
Ziegfeld, Jr., I would never again completely control
anything in my life; but this did not seem to matter.
I knew that my friends, all of them, disapproved of
this marriage. I discovered, to my surprise, that Flo
himself was somewhat taken aback and subdued. I
cannot be sure, of course. I can only surmise, but my

134

PRELUDE TO FANTASIA 135

impression is that his first marriage to Anna Held
had been built on the uncertain foundations of ex-
treme youth, the excitement of Paris, too much
money, and the carefree theatricalism of those times.
At any rate, Flo now felt most fully and most respon-
sibly married, and to a girl hardly more than half his
age. This was no adventure. He was gentle and
thoughtful, but often puzzled.

I set myself to know this man better.

His father was Dr. Florenz Ziegfeld, who was born
in Germany where he studied music under various
teachers of his day. He came to the United States
in 1863 and in 1867 founded the Chicago Musical
College. This became one of the largest music schools
of its kind in America. At one time it had between six
and seven thousand students.

His mother was Rosalie de Hez of France. She
was a great-granddaughter of General Gerard, one
of Napoleon's commanders. Flo was born in Chicago
on March 21, 1867. As a young man he was supposed
to assist his father with the musical college and he
did, at that, learn some music.

He always enjoyed sitting down at a grand piano,
adjusting his chair carefully, and beginning a crash-
ing crescendo of arpeggios with all the flourish of a
maestro. Then he would sigh and stop, not in the
mood for great music, while his friends begged him
to go on. He never went on. Those few chords con-
stituted his entire repertoire.

In the great Chicago fire of 1871, the one supposed

136 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

to have been started by a Mrs. O'Leary's cow, the
Ziegfelds were trapped and scattered like many an-
other distressed family. Flo, who was about four
years old then, hid with his mother and the two
other children under a bridge while Dr. Ziegfeld
searched for them for two days. It was an exciting
vantage point for a small boy to view the holocaust,
one of the greatest spectacles of the times, and Flo
liked to tell about it. Perhaps— well, I do not suggest
this seriously, but the psychiatrists claim everything
these days— perhaps this staggering show had some
influence on Flo Ziegfeld. Certainly, it became his
habit in later years to create the vastest and most
colorful spectacles possible, whatever the cost.

As a young man he paid more attention to amateur
theatricals and to the cotillions, germans, and balls
than to the musical college. He was a great favorite
in Chicago society in his twenties, squiring among
others the daughters of the fabulously wealthy Pull-
man family. He was handsome and gay and not very
serious.

Flo's first venture into show business occurred
when he took over the management of the Trocadero
during the World's Fair. This was supposed to be an
esthetic musical presentation under the direction of
Dr. Ziegfeld, who was chairman of the board of
judges of musical exhibits at the fair. Dr. Ziegfeld
was by this time a celebrity in musical affairs; he
had brought Johann Strauss to America and he had
been the first to negotiate with the Metropolitan
Opera for performances in Chicago. He had also dis-

PRELUDE TO FANTASIA 137

tinguished himself as Assistant Inspector General
and Colonel in the Illinois National Guard.

But his Trocadero music drew no box office and
in desperation he handed it over to young Flo. Under
Flo there immediately appeared a mysterious troupe
called the "Von Biilow Military Band and Orchestra
of Hamburg," which turned out to have no connec-
tion whatever with the famous German conductor,
and a number of vaudeville performers. Flo added
Russian dancers, eccentric English dancers, jugglers
and pretty girls so rapidly that the serious music
soon disappeared. From then on, the show made
money.

It must have been at about this period that Flo
began to go west. He spent a great deal of time on
ranches in Arizona and Wyoming learning to shoot
and to ride. In later years he used to astonish his
friends with the amazing accuracy of his marksman-
ship with pistol or rifle, and even taught me to handle
guns, but I think these skills were not all he acquired
in the west. I suggest that he was greatly influenced,
though he may not have known it then, by the bold,
bright colors of the West. Curiously enough, some
of his brightest effects on Broadway were reflections
of western sunsets he had seen as a very young man.

After the Trocadero incident Flo became an im-
presario in his own right, although from time to
time he was commissioned to go to Europe for his
father to consult with various musicians and orches-
tral leaders. In New York one evening between the
acts of Henry Dixey's musical comedy success

138 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Adonis, he saw a strong man perform against a black
velvet backdrop. The backdrop emphasized the
beauty and power of his enormous smooth muscles
while he easily hoisted great weights and supported
a platform over which three horses were driven.

Eugene Sandow, the strong man, was not then a
star performer. Flo instantly saw what might be done
with him, but Sandow's agents, Abbey, Schoeffel and
Grau, demanded $1,050 a week for him. Flo had
only $2,000, but he suggested a percentage of receipts
instead of a flat salary and he talked so long and so
convincingly that the agents let him take Sandow to
Chicago.

The enterprise succeeded because Flo called in
all the society ladies he knew and permitted them
the thrill of feeling Sandow's muscles.

And Sandow was beautiful. Sandow was not an
ogre of a strong man, as legend seems to have it
today, but a great, gentle, blond Austrian whose
muscles rippled like ropes under velvet. After the
society ladies had touched him a few times, success
was assured. Sandow earned $3500 the first week in
Chicago and continued to make money at that rate
for three months.

Later, when Flo took Sandow on tour, he sought
other means of getting publicity. Once he announced
that Sandow would fight a lion, and arranged for one
to be provided by Colonel Boone's animal show.
But the lion, whose claws had been carefully clipped,
became confused, backed away from Sandow, and
acted so kittenish that the battle was branded a

PRELUDE TO FANTASIA 139

fake by the angry audience. Flo, wise man, was con-
veniently out of town at the time, with the gate
receipts. Sandow was greatly disappointed, he said,
by the cowardice of the lion.

Another time Flo took advantage of a freight wreck
and had twenty men carry a heavy wheel into San-
dow's compartment. He showed this to reporters
and alleged that Sandow had picked it up as a sou-
venir of the excitement. And the New York ship news
reporters were delighted one day when they saw
Sandow seize the window of a porthole with his
hands, wrench it loose, and toss it into the water
when he was sailing for Europe. Of course Flo had
had men loosen the screws before Sandow entered
the stateroom.

These shenanigans went on for four or five years
and established Sandow as the strongest man in the
world. Indeed, I suppose he was, and beautiful to
boot. But probably he would never have attained
his fame without Flo's exuberant showmanship. It
is an odd thing, come to think of it, that in later
years Flo completely reversed this theory of exploita-
tion. He never indulged in stunts with his Follies,
but always sought distinction.

I have come to the point now where I must tell
you about Anna Held. Miss Held, unlike certain other
beautiful women with whom my husband was asso-
ciated, was never my enemy and never, so far as
I know, attempted in any way to do me a disservice.
But you will understand my reluctance: I shall do

140 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

this as well as I can, but it does not make me happy
to make a report on the actress who was married to
Flo Ziegfeld for fifteen years before I met him. Nor
is this a happy story. It ends tragically.

Flo was married to Anna Held from 1897 to 1913.
He met her in London when he went to Europe with
Harry Evans, who had leased the Herald Square
Theater. Miss Held was born either in Paris of Polish
and French parents or she was born in Warsaw, the
daughter of Jewish parents. At any rate, when she
was a young girl she endured hardship and poverty,
worked in restaurants, curled ostrich feathers and
sewed buttonholes to get a living. She and her mother
came to London when the father died, seeking
relatives whom they did not find. Anna began her
remarkable theatrical career in the chorus of the
Princess Theater, progressing gradually from there
to Paris and other capitals of Europe. She became a
music-hall singer of great popularity on the con-
tinent.

When she finally returned to London to make her
real debut she sang translations of popular German
and French songs. The well-remembered "Won't
You Come and Play Wiz Me?" was the song that
made her famous.

Flo saw her at the Palace in London. Several other
managers were trying to get her. Among these was
Alex Aarons, who represented Oscar Hammerstein.
As I always understood the story, Anna demanded a
thousand dollars a week and ten weeks payment in
advance for going to America, but Flo Ziegfeld, who

PRELUDE TO FANTASIA 141

hadn't a farthing at that time, so charmed her in one
interview that she put herself under his management
with no financial arrangements whatsoever. For my
part, I can well believe that.

Miss Held was at that time married to Maximo
Carrero, a South American tobacco planter, and had
a daughter, Liane. Sefior Carrero was much older
than Anna, who was twenty-two when Ziegfeld first
saw her, and he was devoted to her. Apparently, he
was a man of extremely reasonable disposition for
he admitted that he was too old for Anna and let
her go to Flo, whom he called "the lucky American."
Carrero died soon after that and his friends said it
was of a broken heart.

Her first New York engagement in a piece called
A Parlor Match by Charles Hoyt was nearly a failure,
and her French music and songs at first fell flat.
But soon the little song "Won't You Come and Play
Wiz Me?" which is actually no more than a childish
invitation from a small girl, began to catch on— and
Flo's magnificently brassy publicity began to tell.

You know, of course, the celebrated story of the
milk bath. There were other arrangements, equally
as phony. In one of these stunts Anna chased a run-
away horse on her bicycle and rescued a former
Brooklyn magistrate. Not even the extroverted press
agents of Hollywood would dare expect a city editor
to believe one like that now, but at the turn of the
century it went over grandly.

In another contribution to gaiety, Flo arranged a
well-publicized bet with Julius Steger, who later

142 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

became a movie director, in which Steger wagered
that he could kiss Anna two hundred times without
losing his zest. The contest ended at one hundred
and fifty-two kisses, Anna pale with exhaustion and
Steger wobbly— or so the story went.

From then on, Anna was a hit in The French
Maid in 1898, in Papas Wife in 1899, The Little
Duchess in 1901, Mile. Napoleon in 1903, The Pari-
sian Model in 1906, Little Miss Innocence in 1909,
and other such provocative productions.

Anna wanted to be a singing actress but in this
she failed. In the first show he staged in the Weber-
Fields Music Hall after he separated from Lew
Fields, Weber took in Flo as a partner and produced
a musical, Higgledy-Piggledy, starring Anna Held.
But Flo startled burlesque-minded Weber with his
elaborate notions about girls and costumes, gowns
and ballets, and the association was quickly broken
off.

After a succession of other failures, including a
Reginald de Koven operetta called Red Feather,
Anna and Ziegfeld went to Europe and stayed for
two years.

Later, Flo dealt with the Shuberts about starring
Anna in a musical piece at the Casino, wound up in
a disagreeable lawsuit, and met Lillian Lorraine. Of
all the girls in Flo's life, I think I was most jealous
of Lillian. I believe he loved her.

A large part of Anna's and Flo's time was spent in
Europe, where Flo took part in various theatrical
enterprises— and gambled. The era was carefree. They

PRELUDE TO FANTASIA 143

traveled from one pleasure spot to another by tallyho,
often accompanied by Lillian Russell and Sandow.
I suspect that Lillian was in love with the giant.
Flo, of course, would disappear for weeks at a time
leaving Anna alone, and this distressed her. He won
and lost large sums of money at Monte Carlo and
spent whatever he had lavishly at the great hotels.

Freddie Zimmerman told me, much later, about
an incident at Monte Carlo. Freddie and Flo were
traveling together and arrived at the principality
dead broke. Freddie wired his father for money and
received by return cable an order for five thousand
dollars which he cashed at once and gave to Flo
to hold.

They hurried to the chief casino, where Freddie
paused for a brief moment to check his coat and hat.
Flo preceded him into the gambling halls.

As Freddie entered, he met Flo coming out.

"Let's go," said Flo.

"But we haven't even started," said Freddie.

"Oh yes, we have. We lost it all," said Flo.

But I did not know Flo then. These things affected
Anna, not me, and they affected her tragically. She
loved Ziegfeld, I am sure. But to teach him a lesson
and to fetch him back to his senses, she offered to
divorce him— and he took her up on it. She had every
possible reason, of course. Both Liane and her mother
complained that he did not show Anna the attention
she had a right to expect from him. He stayed away
from home, and he did not talk much when he was
there. He was exhibiting that "withdrawn" quality

144 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

which later became so familiar to me, and which I
finally understood. Anna would rail at him about it.

"For heaven's sake, say 'damn' if nothing else/'
she would plead.

She did not expect that Flo would permit the
divorce, but he did permit it and it broke her heart.
She collapsed five years later of pernicious anemia
brought on by dieting in an effort to recapture her
great beauty. Liane said that in her last hours she
called for Flo, who was sent for but arrived a few
hours after she had died. She loved him sincerely to
the end.

But this was not, as I have suggested, a sound
marriage. I think that Flo was attracted by Anna
but never wholeheartedly in love with her. And in
spite of her enormous acclaim as a wicked French
actress who performed naughtily on the stage, Anna
was a Hausfrau. She was frugal, domestic, and ma-
ternal. I am afraid that it was, perhaps her finest
qualities which eventually divorced her from Flo,
for this was a man who lived in a dream-world in
which petty bank accounts (Anna had banked her
savings since she was fifteen and was terrified of
poverty) and domestic economy were wretched
bores.

But Flo owed almost everything to Anna. He owed
her his life work, the Ziegfeld Follies. This I say
because it was Anna who first suggested the Follies.
Not by that name, of course, but by advising him to
display young and beautiful girls in lavish costumes.

n

PRELUDE TO FANTASIA 145

"As in France," she said. "But you will do better.
The American girls are so much prettier."

But when the first Follies glorified the American
girl in August, 1907, Anna Held was not in it.

Anna Held died in 1918. She was forty-five years
old then, and still in love with Flo twenty-three years
after she first met him in London. Flo had not for-
gotten her. We were living at Burkely Crest then,
surrounded by all the opulence and beauty that Flo
found necessary for simple existence, when he came
to me to say that Anna was desperately ill.

"Will you send her things?" he asked.

I did. I was glad to. I sent fresh eggs, baby
broilers, fresh vegetables and butter from the place
daily, and my own doctor. But it was too late.

12. THE GOLDEN HELMET

Flo Ziegfeld was a surprising, contradictory per-
son in every possible way. There was a scene
in my new play Jerry which contained among other
foolishness two amusing bits of stage business. In
the first, after long rehearsal, I had learned to pull
up the covers at the foot of a bed, pop my head in,
and emerge among the pilows. Flo enjoyed this.
He always liked to watch me act, chuckling especially
at any unusual tricks, but his reaction to the second
scene surprised me.

In this one I stood behind a screen, completely
hidden from the audience, and tossed my pajamas to
my sweetheart.

"Now, I don't think a nice girl would do that,"
said the producer of the Follies.

It was fun for me, as a bride, to begin to discover
him: fun, for instance, to discover that he wore long
woolen underwear. Oh, they were interwoven with
silk, to be certain, of a delicate shade of peach, but
woollies they were nevertheless, and Flo grieved
when I threw them away and replaced them with
more fashionable shorts with initials. He was sure
that he would freeze to death.

These trivialities, of course, merely begin to limn
the full picture of a strange and remarkable man.

146

THE GOLDEN HELMET 147

Flo was a person of triple or quadruple personality,
a bewitching person when he wanted to be, a trouble-
some, fascinating lover, but he possessed a world of
his own to which he could and to which he often did
retire. There were times, many times, in my presence
or in any company, in which he would utterly with-
draw. Suddenly, he would not be there.

This world of his own was completely removed
from what was going on about him. Flo formed his
own plans, considered his own ambitions, and re-
vealed to no one what was going on in his mind. It
was impossible, too, to discover whether he de-
liberately cultivated the rather severe, unemotional
personality he presented to the world, or whether
this aspect was the true one. I think it was not the
true one. To me the whimsical, teasing man who
affected a dry, tired, small voice and whose smile
rippled across his face and up into his eyes when he
met someone he loved or was interested in— to me
this was the real man.

He could withdraw, but he was not unaware. His
eyes were as searching as swords' points. Once,
shortly after we were married, I came into the sun-
room wearing an entirely new outfit, from shoes to
hat. Flo was lying down, reading a script. He did
not look up. I know that he did not look up because
I watched him closely, waiting for his reaction to
my new clothes. But without once taking his eyes
from the page he began to comment on every detail
of my costume, naming each color precisely.

Flo's apartment at the Ansonia, where I quickly

148 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

discarded the too opulent French furniture with all
its gilt, was our first home, but I hurried to remodel
a wing of my house at Hastings to make room for a
husband. Now I had always associated with men
who were impeccably groomed. Billy Burke, my
father, was a scrubbed and tidy gentleman whose
boots I was delighted to polish when I was a small
girl. Willie Maugham, Hawtrey, Freddie Martin,
Caruso— to name a few— were all men who were
precise about their barbers and about their linen.
But I had never seen anyone quite like my Flo.

Flo, I discovered, seemed to purchase all the toilet
waters, hair lotions, and beautiful bowls of bath
soap that he could lay hands on. He had quantities
of delicate bath powders which he used with a large
swan's-down puff, leaving the bathroom in the morn-
ing looking as if Gaby Deslys, rather than a man, had
used it. Also, Flo required the roughest of towels,
a shower that shot water at three times the usual
strength, a large electric vibrating machine with
belts and straps, a massage table, and a battery of
sun-ray lamps. His private barber arrived every
morning to shave him before he left for the office.

He looked, as I have said, slightly Italian. His
hair was dark brown, turning slightly gray at the
temples at forty-five. He always brushed it tight,
close to his head, and parted it in the middle. He
took as much care of his hair as any debutante. It
came to a widow's peak quite far back on his fore-
head.

He always wore white pajamas, either of the

Paul Lath
Somerset Maugham, from a painting by Gerald Kelly. R. A.

F.dd

Portrait of Miss Burke bv S. de Ivanowski. now in the Empire
Theatre. New York

THE GOLDEN HELMET 149

finest china silk or white percale with a small stand-
ing collar, buttoned at the side in the Russian fashion,
and for lounging he had extremely soft gay satin
things from Paris in bright combinations, with red
pants and black jacket, or green and red and yellow,
or all flame color, and very colorful dressing gowns.

His hands were exceptional, noticeable at gambling
or cards or when he was standing in a dark theater
directing players on stage. They were long and slen-
der and graceful, with well-kept nails, but never
highly polished or pretentiously manicured.

Recall, now. plavs odd tricks with vou. It is curious
how often our first memory of friends, or of some
lovely, tragic, or important experience, is of the high-
light instead of the substance. ^When I try to visu-
alize Rembrandt's astonishing masterpiece "The Man
in the Golden Helmet," I always see first the glitter
on his right shoulder instead of the brooding face.
At the moment, the scene that comes to me at
Burkely Crest is that of my husband and my mother
sunning themselves by the swimming pool and argu-
ing about the beauties of their respective feet.

They did indeed have beautiful feet, remarkably
small feet. They took care of them most carefully
and frequently compared them, debating between
them the individual merits of their toes and ankles.

My husband's small feet supported a man who was
magnificently fashioned, lean-hipped, broad-shoul-
dered, thin-waisted, and tautly muscled. This may
come as a surprise to many persons who were under
the impression that they knew him intimately: Flo

150 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

was an athlete of almost professional skill in many
fields. Under the influence of Eugene Sandow, he
had learned to use bar bells and Indian clubs daily
and to take a special delight in building a strong
body and keeping it strong. I suspect that few of his
closest acquaintances realized what a powerful man
physically Flo Ziegfeld was. He was interested in
every form of outdoor sport, was a skilled and en-
thusiastic horseman, a fancy ice skater, an expert
gunman, and an angler of real prowess with either
big-game fish or fighting trout. These, of course,
were aspects of Ziegfeld that Broadway never had an
opportunity to observe. He was a dancer of notable
grace, a boxer, and was one of the first men of his
time to race high-speed automobiles. You must be-
lieve me: this was an exceptional man. These were
some of the qualities that made him exceptional.

When he was about forty-five he began to wear
reading glasses for the first time in his life. He did
this as he did everything else: he wore more glasses
than anybody. He had, I suppose, fifty pairs. These
were cached away around the house and in his office,
wherever he might require them. But he always car-
ried two in his pocket.

When he had it, which was far from always, he
liked to have large sums of money on his person.
But not in an expensive wallet. His money, along
with bits of paper, notes, and checks, for enormous
sums, sometimes, were rolled into a wad about which
he twisted a rubber band. He carried a small elephant
for luck, but never encumbered himself with keys,

THE GOLDEN HELMET 151

walking stick, or umbrella. He would, if he liked or
admired the donor, wear gold or star sapphire cuff
links. Luggage annoyed him.

I was astounded, literally shocked, the first time
Flo came to see me from New York when I was on
tour with Jerry. He had wrapped his toothbrush, his
pajamas, and change of linen in the morning paper,
and that comprised his entire traveling equipment.
I remonstrated.

"Couldn't find a bag," he said. "Too much trouble.,,
I discovered that he usually traveled that way. He
would order a private railroad car for a trip to Cali-
fornia at a cost of thousands of dollars, but he himself
would arrive at the station with his possessions in
a newspaper.

Flo was imperturbable. One of his associates at
the Ziegfeld Theater insisted that you could have set
off cannon crackers under his desk without getting
a flicker of response. Once I returned home just
ahead of a driving storm to find that all our curtains
and draperies were flapping themselves to tatters in
the wind, and the rain beginning to splatter through
open windows throughout the house. As I scampered
from room to room slamming windows and calling
for help from the servants, I came on Flo, luxuriously
stretched out on a divan near a window, reading.

"Windy, ain't it?" he said, using his high voice. I
lashed out at him. He went on reading without cock-
ing an eye away from his playscript.

Flo's voice is always imitated by everyone who
knew him. Eddie Cantor and Fanny Brice, for in-

152 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

stance, are especially good at burlesquing the tight,
dry, somewhat nasal way in which Flo usually spoke.
As a matter of fact, I can imitate it pretty well my-
self, and often do. He spoke in that small, tired voice
as if the effort of articulation was too much for him.
But this was a trick. Flo got an effect with that voice
and he knew it. He retired behind it, or he employed
it as you employ the dryness of a Martini for flavor
and kick. Actually, he had a large resonant voice, as
anyone who ever talked to him on the telephone
ought to remember. Or anyone at whom he was ever
angry. There should be many thousands of people
in those two categories. When he was angry, he
shouted.

When Flo was not immediately engaged in a pro-
duction he went into one of two moods: either he
was overcome with utter lethargy or he wanted to
play vigorously and always expensively. Once in pro-
duction, he called in his assistants and let them fight
and compete among themselves to discover what he
wanted, and he was indefatigable, ready to stand
for twelve or fifteen hours at a stretch without sitting
down during rehearsals, ready to work days and
nights without sleep. Then he forgot play completely.
But he had to drive himself to work. He never
wanted to work. Away from the theater, away from
the pulse and drive of Broadway, he seemed ambi-
tionless.

WTien we were first married Flo used to appear
in coonskin coats and shirts that were somewhat too
gay. He took my advice about apparel and, of course,

THE GOLDEN HELMET 153

went completely overboard. He acquired a remark-
able collection of hats, and a wardrobe of dark and
gray business suits and dozens of light suits for Palm
Beach. Oddly enough, he despised full evening
clothes and quarreled about his collars, in which he
looked handsome, as noisily as if he had not all his
life been used to proper evening dress.

When Flo came home to the country after a day
in Manhattan he invariablv arrived with his car
jampacked with boxes, bags, firkins, baskets and
bottles, rare flowers, out-of-season fruit, and unusual
candies. He would unload nectarines, green almonds,
hothouse grapes, brandies, Corona-Coronas, steaks,
chickens— whatever expensive and unusual foodstuff
or condiment he had happened to clap eyes on at
the fanciest grocery stores. He drank little whisky,
but was a master in the preparation of mint juleps,
Sazaracs, Manhattans, Old Fashioneds, and other
drinks. He also admired himself as a salad maker
and could preside over a vast wooden bowl with
oils and wines, chives and cheeses, with all the skill
and quivering appreciation of a maitre d'hotel.

Some weeks before we were married, before he
could load his car with all the astonishing things he
liked to fetch home, Flo sent me a cow. I gathered
that this seemed to him a highly appropriate gift.
We lived in the country; therefore we should have
a cow. And it was a beauty, naturally, a smick-smack
and flawless animal, as carefully selected as a Follies
girl. But we were not in the cow business, had no
place for a cow, didn't know what in the world

154 WITH A FEATHER OX MY N

to do with a cow. I asked Flo if I could lend the ani-
mal to a friend to keep, to break in for me. and he
reluctantly consented, deeply puzzled.

I > possibly, that after his years on Broad-

and in Paris a cow seemed like an exotic thing
to Flo. She was, I learned, only the forerunner of a
menagerie. Next we got a monkey.

He was small and playful, a rather charming fel-
Flo insisted that its name was Charles Frohir..
but this, of course. I refused to countenance. Our pet
used to sit most of the day spitting on his fingers and
polishing a penny. The rest of the time he amused
himself by filling his cheek pouches with pins. Flo
would return from a masterful day on Broadway and
spend half the eyening holding the monkey's head
between his knees to extract those dangerous pins.
I used to think that the monkey did this a-purpose.
just to get Flo's attention. All animals loyed him in-
stantly.

In addition to the surprising gifts Flo would bring
home, he also brought every newspaper and mag-
azine published, which he read from first to last
page, and all the detective stories he could find. Now.
he: man who had been given a classical edu-

cation, who had heard the greatest music, had met
celebrated writers, painters and musicians from
childhood, but his taste in literature never included
a classic. He never read poetrv or quoted it. As for
music, aside from his parlor trick of the interrupted
arpe~:. ;>. he was barelv able to carrv a tune. He
rather croaked when he attempted to hum one of

THE GOLDEN HELMET 155

the great melodies he had driven composers frantic
to get, say, for Sally or Show Boat. I do not know-
how he knew, but he did know when a tune was
good, as the blazing list of his successes reveals.

He loved jewelrv, but chiefly as something to give
away. He completely understood the almost childish
sense of joy and triumph that most people experience
upon suddenly receiving an expensive bauble as a
gift. In his younger days he was once guilty of keep-
ing someone waiting in a carriage for an unfor-
givable time at Monte Carlo; Flo beat his fists
against the doors of every jeweler in town, finally
routed up a drowsy and disgruntled proprietor,
startled him with an extravagant purchase, and made
his amends with the lady, stopping all argument with
a gleam of gold. He liked to give away money, too.
Gold coins were the craze then. Flo enjoyed mak-
ing presents of little bags full of coins, often twenty-
dollar pieces.

But he could not endure to have his gifts wrapped.
He did not want to be kept wraiting while his bene-
ficiary7 tore the paper. He wanted to enjov the
surprise instantlv. And so most of his Tiffanv trifles
appeared in his hand, straight from his pocket.

Flo liked to have beautiful and amusing persons
around him and was alwavs thoughtful in his at-
tentions to them. He was a skillful host. Among his
particular pleasures were fancv dress parties. He
would go to no end of trouble for his friends' cos-
tumes or for his own, but his favorite was the tramp
outfit with ragged hat, beard, red nose, red bandanna

156 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

handkerchief, old shoes, and baggy pants. Most of
the original ragtags of this costume had been worn
by a clown named Watson in the Follies.

He sought beauty everywhere. His love and devo-
tion to his Follies girls was, for this reason, a special
and outstanding thing, quite aside from whatever
interest he might see in them as women. He groomed
their beauty as a horticulturist tends rare orchids,
gave each one of them great personal interest and
affection. Naturally, there was a fine and cautious
line drawn between his home, by which I mean me,
and his adoration for beautiful show girls. I shall
have to say a great deal about that later. But I will
say this now: Flo did endeavor to be fair, did try,
always, to prevent jealousies, many of them so often
unnecessary.

Of another thing I am confidently certain. Ziegfeld
has been portrayed as a man who pursued women.
I have even come across a word which, in regard to
him, is not only vulgar but incredibly inaccurate.
The word is "chaser." By all the pink-toed prophets,
Flo Ziegfeld was never that! Flo never pursued any
woman. He was cool and aloof and difficult. But
there were times, more times than I prefer to recall,
when he made a woman eager for his approval by a
mere look, or a small expression, or by a slight grasp
of her elbow, a low mumbling request to dance.
That was all the effort he ever had to make. The
story of one noted dancing girl about how Flo Zieg-
feld used to batter down her door is a confection of
sheer poppycock. I tell you: I know better.

THE GOLDEN HELMET 157

Flo was the kind of person who inspires story -
tellers. I have heard of a great many that were apoc-
ryphal, harmless enough, funny mostly, but many
of them were exaggerated and did not reveal
anything about Zie^feld except that he was extrava-
gant or demanding. Here are a few anecdotes that
I know are true.

He enjoved practical jokes and would go to any
enormous expense and to any amount of detailed
trouble to fetch off a jape. Once he gave a dinner
for Diamond Jim Bradv in his apartment at the An-
sonia, mcluding in his guest list Henry Dazian, the
most important theatrical costumer in New York.

Bradv, as everyone knows, was a remarkable gour-
met. He was also remarkable for the incandescence
of his jewelry. This evening, he set himself down
in a blaze of anticipation in Flo's magnificent dining
room and looked about eagerly for the feast.

When the waiters appeared, each was dressed in
a precise copy of Mr. Brady's dinner clothes, with
shirt front bedecked with imitation jewels, and with
the stripes of their trousers and the lapels of their
jackets braided in rhinestones.

And when they opened up their silver dishes with
a flourish, instead of food there were imitation
jewels.

Brady took it all right, but demanded his dinner,
which Flo then served.

During the long runs of the Ziegfeld Follies in the
hot summer months (the Follies alwavs opened in
June) Flo would instruct his company manager to

158 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

serve ice cream to everyone back stage. He was
generous about things like that. But at the same time
he would have a notice put on the call board which
read:

ANY MEMBER OF THE COMPANY SOILING HIS COS-
TUME WILL BE FIRED.

I have often seen him standing in the back of the
theater, leaning against a post, with his invariable
cigar tilted upward, watching a performance. He
could detect it instantly if any one girl in the line
had varied her costume or tilted her hat. If he dis-
covered such a calamity, he would hurry back to his
office and dictate a telegram to the company man-
ager:

ANY GIRL WHO CHANGES OR TWISTS HER HAT WILL
BE FIRED.

He sent thousands of telegrams back stage. It was
his favorite means of communication with people
he could have summoned in one minute.

He had a phobia about keeping nonpaying guests
out of his theater, and about holding his dress re-
hearsals in secret. His attaches would be instantly
dismissed, he threatened, if they violated his pass-
list rule.

But he would ignore this rule himself, invite
twenty or thirty prominent society people to a dress
rehearsal— and then forget all about them. He man-
aged to inspire considerable embarrassment with this
trick.

THE GOLDEN HELMET 159

His eye for beauty, as precise as a sextant, in-
cluded his own family as well as his shows. A friend
once complimented him on his daughter's beauty.

Flo answered, in the small voice: "Inch too large
around the hips."

He was superstitious about his productions. In all
of them he managed to insert some kind of animal,
his good luck talisman. He had horses, bears, cats,
chimpanzees (That's right; the chimpanzee was in
Sally), or elephants in every big show he produced.

His love for animals was so intense that in his
busiest production moments he would keep Joseph
Urban waiting in the hall while he spent an hour
with a man who wanted to sell him a dog.

At the end of the first week of a production he
enjoyed presenting gold coins to the members of
the cast along with the salary checks. The boys re-
ceived ten dollars— but the girls got twenty.

Of all the comedians he developed, including Will
Rogers, Fannie Brice, Ed Wynn, W. C. Fields, Walter
Catlett, and Eddie Cantor, I suppose that he had
the most affection for Cantor. It was a fatherly kind
of affection, quite different from the admiration and
real love he felt for Will. But I have a copy of a
telegram he sent to Cantor one Christmas. It says:

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND YOURS. MAY WE
REMAIN TOGETHER AS LONG AS WE BOTH REMAIN
IN SHOW BUSINESS ALTHOUGH PROFITS ON "KID
BOOTS" HAVE BEEN FAR LESS THAN ON "SALLY."

160

WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Flo never nudged you with his humor. He dropped
it, flatly, leaving you never quite sure whether he
was laughing at you or at himself. I am certain that
the smile in the Cantor telegram was not unconscious.

Flo Ziegfeld, as I have been at some pains to set
forth for a number of pages, was a highly-seasoned
personality for a young bride to begin to know. As
my new play began and then went on tour, as we
moved from the Ansonia to Burkely Crest, and as
Hollywood beckoned to me, and other ladies beck-
oned to Ziegfeld, I found that our first year together
was pretty difficult.

13. THE FIRST YEAR

One of the embarrassments about being an actress
is that in the midst of your honeymoon your
play is likely to move out of town or your picture is
likely to go on location. Jerry opened quite success-
fully late in March, but the Frohman office, which
no longer regarded me as its dumpling, almost im-
mediately sent the play to Chicago. I stayed at the
Blackstone, never out of earshot of the telephone.

The first time that Flo came in from New York to
see me I met his train at an unconscionable hour in
the early morning after sitting up the entire night
beautifying myself, but la! what bride wouldn't have
done that! With youth on your side, you can do any-
thing, but these days I am inclined to agree with Mr.
Shaw's well-known conviction that youth is such a
splendid thing that it's a shame to waste it on young
folks.

Dr. and Mrs. Ziegfeld received me simply and
graciously as a member of the family. Flo's mother
was a tiny person, the exquisite kind of little old lady
one wants to put on a whatnot and she charmed me
completely, although she embarrassed me. Mrs. Zieg-
feld brought out her special recipe book crammed
with instructions handed down for generations on the
making of hundreds of French and German sauces

161

162 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

and viands. She took it as a matter of course that her
son's wife would enjoy preparing with her own hands
the strudels and soups, pot roasts, fritters and pastries
her son had relished as a boy. I play-acted the best I
could, but Mother Ziegfeld soon discovered, to her
chagrin, that Flo had married a frivolous actress who
needed the assistance of a butler to brew a pot of
tea.

Flo and I had the summer together in New York
after the Chicago run. "Now that I am a married
woman," I said, "now I can go to Claridge's," naming
the smart restaurant I had never seen because Charles
Frohman kept me under such close wraps. "Aw, who
wants to go there? We go fishing tomorrow,,, said Flo.

And so we went fishing, to Montauk Point and to
Fire Island, and although there is nothing I more
sincerely detest than fixing a worm to a hook or un-
tangling a struggling bass, I thought it was all special
and romantic and divinely ordained. But one evening
on the return by boat from Fire Island, when the fog
moved over us in glamorous shrouds and the waves
tossed us with some hint of danger as we picked up
the lights of New York in the distance, I sighed and
embraced the world in all its loveliness and mur-
mured to my husband: "Darling, isn't it all wonder-
ful?"

Flo did not reply. He was fast asleep. I began to
suspect that perhaps the honeymoon was drawing to
a close.

Hastings, I learned, was making him nervous.

THE FIRST YEAR 163

"Maybe you don't like living in the country," I sug-
gested, fearful that he would agree with me.

He did. "Oh, I dunno, stone walls around me, and
that big iron gate out front. I feel locked up," he said.

Later, he came to love Burkely Crest, especially
after he had begun to transform it according to his
own extraordinary scale and whim, but all during our
first year Mr. Ziegfeld was restless. For one thing, he
was broke. I realized this for the first time by the
present he gave me on my first birthday with him.
He went out into the garden and plucked a single red
rose, wrapped two one hundred dollar bills around
the stem, and presented this to me at breakfast with
an apology. "All I got," he mumbled.

At that time his income was derived chiefly from
percentages on the talents of Anna Held, Lillian
Lorraine, Bert Williams and other players under per-
sonal contract to him. Ziegfeld earned millions but
he never saved a ha'penny. Money had no meaning
for him as capital or investment. It was something
he used, like scenery or music, with which to pro-
duce shows, or something he played with when he
gambled. Many times, to my precise knowledge, he
deliberately spent more on a production than it could
possibly return even as a smash hit with all seats sold
out for a full season.

But one day I received a notice from a bank that
I had overdrawn some nine hundred dollars. It was
not serious. I had money in other banks. But Flo
purported to be astonished.

"Don't you know about keeping check stubs?" he

164 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

said. His own financial arrangements, involving hun-
dreds of thousands of dollars, were as casual as "How-
do-you-do" but he was amazed by any one around
him who was not a precisionist.

To add more confusion to our already scrambled
honeymoon, the Frohman office now decided to pun-
ish me for marrying Ziegfeld. Up to this time I had
often played important one-night stands between
longer engagements of three to four weeks in big
cities on the road, but now, with Jerry a hit, the
Frohmans and Alf Hayman deliberately scheduled
me in September for seventy-two one-night stands
with hardly a breather between jumps. I had to ac-
cept this with what grace I could muster or lose my
place in the theater— or so I thought then. This time
Mother could not accompany me and, obviously, Flo
Ziegfeld could hardly make a nationwide tour with
me under the Frohman banner.

Flo prepared a map for mother with little flags
showing my itinerary and joined me when he could.
We met in Philadelphia, Galveston, San Antonio, Los
Angeles. Flo would arrive, as I have said, with his
things wrapped in a newspaper, then reach in his
pocket and hand me a diamond and sapphire collar.

At Galveston I saw him trap himself with a typi-
cal Ziegfeld gesture. We had hired a car to take us
sight-seeing and came across an interesting-looking
Mexican peddling hot tamales. "Let's have one," I
suggested.

"A dollar's worth," Flo said to the man. There was
no such thing as "one" of anything for Flo. I suppose

THE FIRST YEAR 165

he did not know, either, that there were denomina-
tions of money in sums less than a dollar. He was a
baffled man when the peddler left him with fifty hot
tamales in his lap.

I went on to San Francisco and Flo returned to the
Ansonia in New York. I had begun to hear, from
various friends who thoughtfully told me things for
my own good, certain rumors of Flo's attentions to
other girls. One night I had been disturbed at a hotel
to see him emerging from the room of an attractive
little dancing girl. But he had easily explained that.
It was a matter of business, and interviews between
dancers and producers in hotel rooms were not, after
all, uncommon. I had some misgivings, but it was
not difficult to brush them aside.

In San Francisco I received several telephone calls
from Flo. Transcontinental conversations were a
novelty then, requiring great patience and waiting,
a great deal of shouting, and many inquiries of "Can
you hear me?" There is a story in these telephone
calls.

Immediately after our marriage I met one of Flo's
principal aides, an extremely amiable young man
whom Flo was immensely fond of. This was Gene
Buck, in whom Flo placed more confidence, I think,
than anyone else in his organization. Gene was a per-
son of great integrity and great talent, a song writer
of real distinction, and an assistant with exactly the
high level of good taste that Flo always demanded.
He was good-looking, good-natured, and possessed
of charm— but to my shame I have to report truthfully

166 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

that I was a bit on the lofty side at this time. In short,
I was snooty. I think that women who are jealous of
their husband's business friendships are inane and
wretched women, but I was guilty of that kind of
jealousy. Gene Buck, who became president of ascap,
has undoubtedly forgiven me long ago.

Be that as it may, Gene was in Flo's office all the
time for the two whole days that it took him to get
me on the telephone in San Francisco. Time after
time he would hear Flo grumble or shout, "Hello?
San Francisco? Hello, Frisco? Hello— Frisco— "

And the result was a song, one of the hits of a
subsequent Follies. That's how "Hello Frisco" was
inspired.

My tour ended in Los Angeles where the first great
movie-makers, Ince and Lasky and De Mille and D.
W. Griffith, had opened studios in barns and vacant
lots in a pepper-tree-lined village which had begun
a few years before as a suburb for retired Iowans.
This town was called Hollywood, if you can call it
a town. It was a village.

But Thomas H. Ince, one of the great pioneers of
the screen, had a fine studio out in Santa Monica and
he immediately set about to convince me that I ought
to become a movie star. I was attracted by his offer
because it meant an enormous amount of money,
about three hundred thousand dollars for one picture,
which, since it was free of income tax, compared a
good deal more than favorably with what most stars
command today. I also met Jesse L. Lasky, who made
interesting overtures. I still have, dated June 18, 1915,

THE FIRST YEAR 167

a letter signed by Mr. Lasky and think it might amuse
you to read it in full. The letterhead listed Mr. Lasky
as president, Samuel Goldwyn as general manager,
and Cecil B. De Mille as director general of the "Jesse
L. Lasky Feature Play Company," of 6284 Selma
Avenue, Hollywood, California. Here it is:

This is simply to let you know that I have written
to Mr. Goldwyn, our general manager, at our New
York office, and have repeated to him our conversa-
tion over the 'phone. He now understands that if you
should suddenly decide to close with any firm other
than ourselves, before doing so, you will wire me,
thus giving us a chance to compete for your services
should we desire to do so. I also have told him that
you will probably leave the entire matter rest until
you reach New York about the first of August when
Mr. Goldwyn can meet you and Mr. Ziegfeld to-
gether. I feel that this would be the best plan for
all concerned as you will then be able to ascertain
just how many weeks you can devote to pictures, the
situation concerning your new play, etc.

In the meantime, allow me to thank you for giving
my firm the consideration as expressed above. I have
a feeling that before long, you will be occupying the
pretty dressing room which I showed you and we
shall be busily engaged in helping to preserve for
future generations of theatregoers Miss Billie Burke
at the height of her career.

The newspapers immediately published stories
about these negotiations and the result was a fast
telegram from Hayman:

168 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

IF YOU SIGN UP WITH PICTURES BEFORE WE SEE YOU
AGAIN WE WILL NOT CONTINUE WITH YOU FOR
ANOTHER SEASON.

I replied, just as fast:

I HAVE DONE NOTHING UP TO NOW WAITING TO
HAVE TALK WITH YOU ABOUT PICTURES. BUT ANY
MORE IRATE TELEGRAMS FROM YOU AND I WILL
SIGN IMMEDIATELY.

This reply indicates, you will please observe, con-
siderable development in me. Even a few months ago
I should not have dared send such a wire to Hayman.
But Hayman's character had not developed at all.

He replied:

WE WILL HAVE NONE OF OUR PEOPLE IN PICTURES
AND THIS MEANS YOU.

When I reached New York, unheralded and un-
met by the Frohman office, I was astonished to find
that Flo had leased a yacht. He had this beautiful
thing moored up in the Hudson and from circumstan-
tial evidence there had been any number of gay
parties on it. I was a little suspicious, but the main
thing on my mind then was the possible conflict be-
tween our careers. It was apparent that the Frohman
office was not charmed by the notion of providing
interesting employment for me for quite a while. An
actress is a woman who acts. I was not fetched by
the prospect of devoting myself permanently to being
chatelaine of Burkely Crest, even as the wife of Flo

THE FIRST YEAR 169

Ziegfeld. I decided in the end that the best course
for me was to make some movies. I told Flo that I
thought I should go with Ince.

Such a move was a good business deal for the
family. Flo, as my manager, would make a consider-
able sum of money too. He was not eager to see me
leave for California. We both understood the dangers
of such a separation, but we were show folks. Flo
approved the plan. I trotted down to the Frohman
office, was grudgingly admitted to the presence of
the great Alf , and I made my announcement firm and
terse.

"I am through. I am going to do a picture," I said.
It was as simple as that. It might never have hap-
pened if C. F. had been alive.

Just before I left, Flo announced a new plan of
his own. He said he was going to open a roof garden
where people could have dinners and late suppers
while they watched entertainers on the stage. I was
horrified.

"And you, I suppose, will walk around like a waiter
with a napkin on your arm," I told Flo. "Why, it's
the silliest thing I ever heard of. The great Ziegfeld!"

The venture became Flo's world-famous "Ziegfeld
Roof," and it taught me a handsome lesson. Never
again did I offer a word of advice or criticism about
my husband's business.

My salary from Thomas H. Ince was ten thousand
dollars a week, but when I arrived in October I found
that Mr. Ince was nowhere near ready to start shoot-
ing. He hadn't a story, even, and he was as uncon-

170

WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

cerned as if he were keeping his cook waiting. This
habit of employing people at extraordinary salaries
and then forgetting about them was born early in the
motion picture business and is today, of course, one
of the most time-blessed traditions of a factory town
which prefers to do everything by rote. Ince disap-
peared into the Catalina hills for three months, un-
ruffled about my salary and about other mounting
expenses.

I brought Mother out for this adventure, along
with Cherry and my little cousin Dudie, a cook, a
housemaid, and a chauffeur. We took a fine house in
Santa Monica with a view of the ocean, and finally
I went to work in a picture called Peggy.

William Desmond was my leading man. I played
the part of a girl from Scotland who, for some plot
motivation I cannot for the life of me recall, dressed
as a boy. Ince built an entire fishing village near the
ocean, erected a beautiful little chapel— it stood until
four or five years ago where the road winds down
from Topangah Canyon to the Pacific— and used back-
ground music for the first time in motion picture
history.

Before I completed Peggy, Ince made me an offer
which unquestionably would have changed my life
pattern from then on. He offered me a five-year con-
tract. I would have become one of the first motion
picture stars, and under the brilliant guidance of
Thomas H. Ince I have every reason to think that I
should have gone onward and upwards with the
motion picture arts, and might have been well estab-

THE FIRST YEAR 171

lished in both romance and comedy by the time the
cinema found its voice in 1928; and then, of course,
I think I would have been better off than ever. So
few actors or actresses at that time had had stage
training. After all, reading lines was one of my
specialties.

This was a turning point in the road and this time
I recognized it. I saw the possibilities— some of them,
at any rate— and I weighed them. This was the in-
evitable conflict that at some time or another must
be faced and decided by all women who have a pro-
fession or a career. I thought this through. If I stayed
in Hollywood, the result was as predictable as to-
morrow's sunrise. I could not hope to remain Mrs.
Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., and at the same time become a
motion picture star. To stay in Hollywood meant that
my marriage had little chance of enduring. And so I
made the immemorial decision that has been happily
made by so many other women. I chose my husband
over my career. Not, however, without prayer and
tears, and not without several troublesome scenes.

While I was working on Peggy I began to hear dis-
turbing news. This news came, as it always comes,
from the best-intentioned friends. It is not a fact, in
my opinion, that "the wife is always the last to hear."
Not if she knows at least two other women. They will
hasten breathlessly to back fence or to Western Union
and tell you what you should know for your own
good.

Some of my friends wired me the name of Olive

1 i 2 wim a FEATHER on \n NOSE

Thomas. Some asked me point-blank when I would
divorce Flo.

Miss Thomas, whom Flo had featured on his roof
garden, had a beautiful little (ace, a heart-shaped
Irish face, with shadowy dark hair and deep blue
eyes. She was one of the girls Flo rolled twenty-dollar
gold pieces with on the roof. The girls always won.

My friends told me, true or false. Interesting anec-
dotes about yachting parties, and under the impetus
of these dispatches my rapidly developing character
took a new turn which surprised even me. I found a
good deal of unsuspeeted salt in my make-up and
enjoyed a thorough-going lit of blazing, red-headed
jealousy. 1 sulked, wept, and wailed. Part of my dis-
tress o( course, was sheer curiosity, but chiefly I
suffered from a sense oi bitterly outraged justice. A
woman who has decided to give up a career for a
man is not the most tolerant person in the world when
another woman is mentioned, especially when the
other woman is a famous beauty.

When Peggy was finished I fled to San Franeiseo
to hide my head. Finally, 1 wired Flo to come out
and talk things over. I had worked myself into a state
oi temper that demanded expression. 1 was pretty
dramatic about it. 1 pla\ed the scene big, with ges-
tures, and 1 covered a lot of territory.

Flo sat in my hotel room quietly smoking. Finally
he said, "Look. Billie, you can't believe all you will
always hear about me and various girls. You are
always going to hear that kind of thing. 1 have trusted

THE FIRST YEAR

173

you. I always trust you. Now you have got to give
me the benefit of the doubt."

I quarreled at him for two days. He was a dreadful
man to quarrel with. He just sat there puffing his
cigars, saying nothing. But one late afternoon when
I had almost exhausted my vocabulary he arched an
eyebrow at me and used the little voice to mumble,
"The trouble with you, Billie, is that when you accuse
me you always pick the wrong girl."

This was my cue to tear the draperies off the win-
dows and throw the chinaware, all of which I did
energetically, bringing down the curtain to that scene
in a tantrum. I doubted at the time if Mrs. Fiske
could have done it better. But there was no applause.

I returned to New York but not with Flo. I wanted
very much to return to Flo. I wanted him to beg me
to return, but Mr. Ziegfeld, who never uttered a hard
word to me in all our quarrels, was infuriatingly pa-
tient and as cool as if he had written the script. But
I found reason for my return— and so did he— in an
arrangement for me to star in a picture called Glorias
Romance by Rupert Hughes, which was to be filmed
in Florida. There were three hundred thousand dol-
lars in it for Mr. and Mrs. Ziegfeld and we used this
as our excuse.

In New York I got word that Miss Thomas had
revived her interest in Jack Pickford, Mary's brother.
And Flo after a month came to me and announced
quite calmly, with no explanations, excuses, or repre-
sentations of being sorry, that everything was now
straightened out, that we had nothing more to worry

174 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

about. The telltale quirks at the corners of his mouth
which always announced when Flo was being cava-
lier with the truth were absent this time. I felt that
my marriage was safe for a little while.

But the facts of life with Flo Ziegfeld now revealed
themselves to me plainly. I perceived that I was des-
tined to be jealous of the entire Follies chorus as well
as the Follies star list for the rest of my married life.
I primped my curls, powdered my nose, and set my-
self to the chore, a rather staggering assignment. But
I was young. Still, one of the first things I did was
to discover a brand-new girl.

I first became aware of her during Glorias Ro-
mance in Florida, but I did not meet her until Octo-
ber 23, 1916, at the Ansonia in New York. She had a
thatch of red hair, a beautiful body, and blue eyes—
a real Ziegfeld girl. She weighed nine and a half
pounds and we named her Patricia Burke Ziegfeld.

Irving Berlin was my first caller after Patricia's
arrival and Flo was late. He wandered in looking a
little sad.

"What do you know," he said. "Lorraine got mar-
ried. Imagine that!"

I was not amused.

At about this time Flo and Charles Dillingham had
combined their resources to take over a new theater
and to put on a ginormous production called Miss
1916, starring Marie Dressier and Leon Errol. This
meant that Flo was busy and late almost every night,
so that on the few evenings when I felt free to leave
my baby I could arrange small parties of friends for

THE FIRST YEAR 175

dinners and the theater. Actually, even as a new
mother, I began to see more plays than I had ever
been accustomed to before. One of these was The
Show of Wonders, with music by Sigmund Romberg.

And there danced onto the stage the most refresh-
ing, smilingest, delightful child I had ever clapped
wide eyes upon.

"She's marvelous," I whispered. "Who is she?"

One of my theater-wise friends told me.

"Used to be known as 'Miss Sugarplum.' Real
name's Mary Ellen Reynolds. Comes from Louisville.
Been in vaudeville all over the world with her sisters.
Known now as Marilyn Miller."

I was so charmed with this confection of a girl that
I told Flo about her at once, full of enthusiasm.

"But she does her hair all wrong," I remember say-
ing. "She isn't costumed properly. She has a sweet
voice but not much of it and I've seen better danc-
ing-"

"So you want me to look at a girl who can't dress,
can't dance, and can't sing? For the Follies?99 Flo
grinned.

"But she makes the most enchanting effect. A de-
lightful thing happens when she comes on stage. Her
smile—"

But Flo would not walk around the block to dis-
cover a new star and he discounted my report. Almost
invariably, he preferred to wait until a player had
been made famous by someone else or had moved
closer to the New Amsterdam Theater. Then he
would cheerfully pay a thousand dollars more a week

176 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

to get that star under contract to him. He put me off
about Marilyn Miller for almost two years. Miss
Miller did not appear in the Ziegfeld Follies until
1918.

Eventually, I suppose, she would have made the
Follies without any recommendation from me, but it
is a passing strange thing that I worked so hard
trying to introduce Marilyn Miller and Florenz
Ziegfeld, Jr.

14. MENAGERIE

While I was concerning myself with hesitant ges-
tures toward a career, and with that lively
production of my own called Patricia, my disturbing
husband took over Broadway as if it were a province
and he a sovereign with banners. He became "The
Great Ziegfeld," and "Follies Girl" entered the lan-
guage as the ultimate synonym for glamor. He put
money into his shows— his own, or Charles Dilling-
ham's, or anybody's— with the prodigality of a rich
child at a candy counter, always seeking double
handfuls of richness, sweetness or novelty. But then,
whether he had spent a quarter of a million or three
hundred thousand dollars on one production, he in-
variably belabored and drove all his associates to the
point of yearning for straightjackets until he achieved
in the end the magnificent, funny, tasteful spectacles
that were the Ziegfeld Follies of those amazing years.

In 1914 Flo starred Anne Pennington, Vera Michel-
ena, Ed Wynn, Leon Errol and Bert Williams, but
even these ripe personalities were not enough. In
1915 he added Olive Thomas, Mae Murray, W. C.
Fields and Ina Claire. In 1916 came Frances White
and Lily an Tashman, and in 1917 there appeared
Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers and Peggy Hopkins Joyce.

During the season of 1915-16 Will Rogers made his

177

178 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

first success in the legitimate theater (he had been a
vaudeville roper before that) in Hands Up. A too-
hastily lowered drop which persisted in catching on
his rope, causing the audience to refuse to let the
show go on until Will finished his trick, had some-
thing to do with increasing Will's reputation. As a
result, Flo engaged him for his roof show, where he
also tried out Eddie Cantor before promoting them
both to the Follies.

Then Flo turned his attention to Burkely Crest and
made a production out of that. We moved there when
Pat was three weeks old.

Burkely Crest by this time had been expanded by
a number of acres in Hastings-on-Hudson, partly due
to Mother's enterprise; in many ways she shared with
Flo the conviction that if a thing were good, then
more of the same was essential. Flowers grew every-
where, in hothouses or in rhythmically arranged rows,
like plumed chorus girls, but hundreds of thousands
of blossoms burgeoning outdoors were not enough
flowers for Flo. He ordered in addition great arm-
loads of fresh cut flowers from professional nurseries,
always including battalions of American Beauties,
often with stems two yards long. And the moment a
petal wilted, they were thrown out.

He planted the meadow through which the road
wound from gate to house with a constellation of
hyacinths and daffodils, set twenty-four towering
blue spruces, purchased at a mighty price from Ben-
jamin Duke, on each side leading up to the house,

MENAGERIE 179

and at the gate planted English box which became
his special pride.

During some of our quarrels he would change into
the high voice and regard me plaintively.

"All right, Bill," he would say. "But who gets my
trees?"

Then the animals began to arrive. We became the
proprietors of a herd of deer, ten head in all, and then
of two bears which lived with us until they became
dangerous nuisances and departed for the zoo. We
also had two lion cubs, a regiment of partridges and
pheasants with their own special preserve of several
acres, innumerable cockatoos and parrots, an ele-
phant, and later a pony that had been ridden by the
Prince of Wales.

The elephant arrived in charge of a keeper with a
costly howdah, or saddle. He was a baby, weighing
only two hundred and fifty pounds, was the pet of
everybody on the place, and enjoyed strong chewing
tobacco or cigarettes to eat. He became a nuisance
after he discovered the kitchen, trumpeting and
storming the doors to get in, and on one occasion
trapped our cook Delia Leonard and almost squeezed
the life from her in his passion for Uneeda biscuits.
Eventually, our elephant had to join the circus.

Then we had buffaloes. Flo had been doing a show
with the talented writer J. P. McAvoy, with whom
Flo did not get on so well. One of the reasons why
they did not agree, it turned out, was that in this pro-
duction, which was labeled Americana, Flo ardently
desired to have two buffaloes. Even after he had

180 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

purchased the animals he could not persuade Mr.
McAvoy to accept them on stage— a strange, unrea-
sonable prejudice, Flo thought. So he brought the
buffaloes home instead.

Almost at once, one of them had a baby. I recall
this especially because on that day there was an
eclipse.

"This," I said, "does not seem like the Flo Ziegfeld
I know. How does it happen that you are not having
two eclipses? One eclipse for ordinary folk, but surely
two for Burkely Crest!"

After a Follies tryout in Atlantic City, the house-
hold was gifted with seven dwarf ponies. These had
the run of the place, preferring to eat flowers but
often nibbling ears if they could catch you reading
in the garden.

Charlie Dillingham kidded Flo continually about
the pheasant preserves.

"Flo likes to go into that enclosure," he said, "be-
cause it gives him the same feeling of bravery that a
lion tamer experiences when he goes into the lions'
cage."

Also there were geese, lambs, ducks, three hundred
chickens, parrots, and fifteen dogs.

Flo had a playhouse built for Patricia that was
a replica of Mount Vernon, authentic in every detail,
equipped and furnished like the original, but this
was not enough. Flo had three hundred geraniums
planted around it and established on the front porch
a great white cockatoo with a golden crest. General
Washington, I think, would have been astonished.

Underwood d~ Underwood
In Xoel Coward's The Marquise (New York. 1929)

2 CC

zf

Ctf

MENAGERIE 181

One afternoon I returned home late to find Sidney,
Flo's valet, and Delia whispering and grinning in the
library. Sidney was as proper as an engraved invita-
tion and always called me "Madam." He straightened
up and addressed me solemnly.

"Madam," he said, "Mr. Ziegfeld has done it again."

I did not know whether to expect zebras or a mink
farm, but they led me to the dining room. We had a
rather large dining room which had been carefully
decorated and furnished with the correct formal
things, but now it looked as if the Imperial Russian
Court had launched a give-away program with the
Imperial crockery. Every sideboard and table, as well
as the floor, was covered with chinaware, all marked
with the coat-of-arms of the late Emperor Nicholas
II, formerly used for state banquets. There were doz-
ens of tall vases and other pieces "for pretty" only,
each of them so large that two men were required to
lift them.

All told, there was a complete service for one
hundred guests.

Flo came in.

"What in the world is this?" I demanded. "What
can I do with all this magnificence? Flo— it would
take twelve footmen just to handle it, and it needs a
dining room as large as Madison Square Garden. Flo,
are you crazy! How much did it cost?"

"Just a little present I picked up for you," Flo said.

"How much?" I said.

"Oh, not much. I got a bargain."

As it turned out, he had got a bargain. He had paid

L82 WITH A FEATHER OX MY NOSE

onlv thirty-eight thousand dollars for this little gift
he just picked up for me. He was very sad when I
made him send it back.

Later, when I was in Palm Beach, he saw a set of
hand-decorated plates at Marshall Field's, bought
them on the spur of the moment and had them
shipped to Florida. They were unusual and useful.
Flo was always likely to make a too-lavish gesture on
his first impulses, but before he was through he
wound up in good taste. Xo matter what the expense,
of course.

Every gesture he made was large, at home or in
the theater, but the key to Flo's enormous successes
was, I have always thought, his love of color and his
impeccable skill in using it. He had discovered Joseph
Urban toiling in a Boston attic and promoted him
overnight to design Follies sets because he saw in-
stantly that this man was no more abashed by color
than Tintoretto or Matisse. But Flo had some pecu-
liarities about color. He admired pink and white,
despised violet, and always insisted, whatever the
scene, that his girls "come on" bathed in pure white
gleaming light, which after all was only common
sense. The colors were background. The girls were
to be seen.

We began to entertain at Burkelv Crest on a scale
we had not imagined before. I suspect that I am
essentially the tea-cozy type of hostess, but not Flo.
One day when I had been ill Flo took over, called in
Delia, and planned a dinner party.

"How manv, Mr. Ziecfeld?"

"Small party, Delia. About forty."

Delia and I knew that this meant sixty.

"Hois d"oeuvresT Mr. Ziegfekl?*'

"Yes, something unusual. And let's have terrapin.
May be none here. IH get 'em by plane. And better
have some baby lamb and brook trout Mrs. Ziegfeld
wvOi !;/-; i rrr- ;: ~i:r "

>sed season, Mr. ZiegfeH.*
er mind. IH attend to that And Delia, Irving
Berlin will be here. Better have frogs' legs for him.

ii-r r.;- >:.r ;r r-:E

It was Irving s birthday, we learned, so Delia
ordered a special cake. So did Mr. Ziegfeld and we
had both. Flo s was about the size of a small ke-

^rmr.y rim: mi " m :r:;;,:r: ■■•■- :';. m --. e: m ::
Irving s "Alexander's Ragtime Band.9

We had motion pictures every night, all prodncers

rmmr :i"v;:: :; E-mi mm- rimi m :;; Z:mmO :
inspection^ and although we frequenth' invited large

mmmmE ;: mE rm rm :. mr r;m:E :; sm mmm Km
chief concern always was that every servant on the
place found a comfortable chair to see the entire

s >.;-.••■ Or. >m ::-:::: mmim m :r-cr ml rm :rm: :;-.••'
;: rm N-r'." Ammmmm mmmrirm :;; ; m :mr r/;
Em: rmm :; rm r ,-rr: m Erym ir Ermim m:E rm
vm.E rri::;:.: "mm i^riir. Emmmm: :rrvr
with them, but they understood him and loved him
mi mm EmrmI him v. rm rmm: -mmm :: ■ :m: m.r:
rrmrEErOr :;r rrm mi; mymmi 0; 1:::;^:

'rr ;rr rm r;ri". mm :; Ci.::'.n;.i v: Fmrmm m;

184 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

now found that the only possible way to travel was
by private car. I had weaned him away from carrying
his belongings in a newspaper and now he used fine-
grained leather suitcases and boxes, usually filling
one end of the car with his personal belongings. On
one trip to the Coast I recall that he took in addition
to our own coach an entire Pullman for Delia, Sidney
and the other members of our personal staff at an
added cost of eleven hundred dollars. When Delia
became ill he moved out of his private drawing room
and insisted that she take it.

Flo's ideas of entertainment were sometimes star-
tling. Once, when we had taken a big house in Palm
Beach on Jungle Road, I planned a formal dinner
party for a number of guests of the so-called inter-
national set— formal Britishers and epicurean Latins
mixed with Philadelphia society. When dinner was
served, it turned out to be not what I had ordered
at all but fifty pounds of corned beef and cabbage
with yellow turnips and Irish potatoes especially pre-
pared by Dinty Moore in New York and flown down
steaming hot. I was horrified as our guests began to
sniff this strange food— but some of the ladies ate so
much that they had to be assisted to their cars. Flo
was right, as he always was; he cared little for con-
vention but he knew what people liked.

Life with Ziegfeld included not only the beauty
spot that he made Burkely Crest, but camping.
Camping a la Ziegfeld in nowise resembled outdoor
life as practiced by those rugged young men, the Boy

MENAGERIE 185

Scouts of America. Ziegfeld in the backwoods of
Canada more closely resembled a rajah on safari with
carpets, ices, cooks, and distinguished guests.

Our camp, called "Patricia," on "Billie Burke
Island" was at the end of a chain of lakes some 125
miles northwest of Quebec. It seems to me that Flo
once casually mentioned the sum of one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars as the cost of setting it up.
Item: two thousand dollars for blankets; item: a spe-
cial chef imported by arrangement with Dinty
Moore; item: eight guides; item: a carload of char-
coal.

There were six cabins at Camp Patricia, electricity,
and modern plumbing. Charles Dillingham, who al-
ways insisted that I bought only crystal glassware
from Tiffany's for Pat's bottles, also alleged that our
light bulbs were designed by Cartier's. Other friends
insisted that our electricity was handmade by Thomas
A. Edison. But possibly these were exaggerations.

From our camp we saw the Aurora Borealis nightly
as it flared in the sky, like a ruffled flounce, and from
our main cabin and commissary, where different
colored oilcloths were laid on the tables for every
meal, we relaxed in the serene view of lakes, pines,
birches, and our chaste, cool beach.

We enjoyed imported cheeses, fresh trout, and car-
loads of special delicacies sent up from New York by
Flo. He was the mighty hunter stalking the woods
like an Iroquois, fishing all day, resting himself by
spending enough energy to power a small yacht. Pat,

186 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

when she was old enough to sit up, went with her
father in canoes, learned to fish, later learned to
shoot. I have always been especially happy that mv
daughter had those summers at camp with her father
and knew him in that outdoors mood. The accoutre-
ments were expensive and complex, but in the woods
Flo was simple and relaxed, completely old-shoe, and
father and daughter were close, warm friends.

But woods or no woods, the telegrams flowed in
steady staccato, delivered at who knows what cost,
for Flo without means of communication was as pent-
up as Boulder Dam without a sluice. He planned
Show Boat at camp, and strange as it may seem, con-
sidering the loveliness and sentiment of that most
beautiful of all musical plays, Flo produced it almost
entirely on Western Union blanks. And here is an-
other odd thing:

Among the talented young people who came so
frequently to us at Burkely Crest, at Palm Beach, or
at the camp, was a wistful young fellow named Irving
Berlin. Irving may not enjoy these adjectives, but
when he was a boy in his twenties he appealed to me
as shy, gentle, and sweet. He had just come through
a great sorrow, the loss of his young wife, when we
first knew him. It was years before he met Ellen
Mackay and added a chapter to romantic Americana.

Irving, as I have said, saw our baby just after
Patricia was born. He worked for Flo on the 1915
Follies, I believe, and did the new Century show that
Flo and Dillingham put on next year, Miss 1916.

MENAGERIE 187

But to my story: when Flo discussed with Irving
the possibilities of Show Boat as a musical, to be
taken from Edna Ferber's great novel of the Missis-
sippi, Irving missed the point entirely. He discour-
aged Flo and argued that Show Boat would never be
a success! Well, Mr. Berlin will have to forgive me
for reporting that one. So far as I know, he has never
been wrong about anything else.

Rudolf Friml also visited us at camp, bringing all
his talent with him, but no woodcraft. Flo would
never trust him near a gun for fear he would aim it
in all directions, but he did one day permit him to use
his favorite fishing tackle. Rudy promptly dropped it
into eighty feet of lake water.

George Gershwin, to the best of my knowledge,
never wandered far from a piano in his life, so we
did not see him at camp. But he came to Burkely
Crest often. He was fresh from a tidal wave of hom-
age in London and in his early twenties was already
one of the distinguished composers of the day, but he
did not require large audiences to inspire him. He
would drop in before dinner, play without being
asked, and I would sit for hours listening. And, I
want to remind myself, fully conscious of the rare
experience I was enjoying.

There were moments of serenity and fulfillment,
and moments of great fun. One of the funniest was
the time we received word at Camp Patricia that the
Duke of Atholl, then visiting the Dominion, had re-
quested permission to visit us.

There was a tremendous scurrying around, a great

188 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

polishing and policing, and all kinds of twitter-pated
preparations by me getting ready to meet the blue
blood whose wife was sister of the Queen of England,
and finally, with fanfare, the Duke arrived. He was
impressive. He wore Scotch kilts and a full beard, and
he regarded us benignly. All the ladies in camp, led
by me, hurried up to present ourselves, almost curt-
sying in our eagerness, and finally Flo stepped for-
ward. He had been keeping himself oddly in the
background and it did not seem like him to be shy in
the presence of any kind of royalty.

Suddenly he brushed us all aside, stepped in front
of the Duke, and kicked him in the stomach.

The Duke sat down hard.

We were amazed and embarrassed, and we gazed
at Flo for an explanation.

He glowered down at the stricken Duke.

"Take off that beard, you old faker," he said. "Glad
to see you, Jerry."

Our Duke was Dr. Jerome Wagner of New York,
friend and physician of so many theatrical folk, and
he had made the mistake of attempting a practical
joke at Flo Ziegfeld's expense. Dr. Wagner may be
found on Fifty-seventh Street today and if you are a
patient of his, you might ask him how it feels to be
a kicked duke.

Flo sent him out on the lake in a leaky canoe the
next day and almost drowned him.

But the spirit of Camp Patricia is best expressed
by Miss Pat herself. Here is a letter she wrote to Flo
when she was about twelve years old. It is unedited:

MENAGERIE

189

Dearest Daddy;

My, but a week has flown by and I meant to write
you every other day. A lot has been going on and
most of it has been fun. Although I got into a bit of
a fix the day after you left. Mummy has always been
saying how wonderful castor oil was for the hair, put
it on a day before you wash it, well I thought if castor
oil was good, butter would be that much better. So I
proceeded to nip a cup when Wesley wasn't looking,
and went to work— I guess it wouldn't have been so
bad if I hadn't gone down to the lake to wash my
hair. The cold water hit the butter and boom, you can
imagine what happened. It took mummy an hour and
every bit of her good disposition and all the hot water
in camp to unbutter me. I shan't try that again.

Dr. and Mme Couillard came by tuesday and we
went down the Jeannotte after some trout. It was a
perfect day, we went down two portages to the small
pool, the good one where you got the two and a half
pounder. We took lunch not as elaborate as when
you're here but I made the fried tomato with the eggs
on top and the creamed corn mixed with baked beans.
We had no birds, but Dr. is going to bring Flip next
Sunday and we'll go after some. Tom Thumb is going
to look just like Flip, I hope we can bring him home
with us, please! We miss you very much aren't you
coming up soon. We got seventeen trout and I am
going to see if Mr. Rowley can send some to you.

The bears seem quite happy, Cracker loves to play
with Dempsey but I am afraid he'll get hurt, then he
can't go hunting with us. Bridget still sits in the water

190 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

half the day, she doesn't hark at all just sits. Mummy
is afraid she'll catch cold, but she wont stay out. The
bears had colic last night and today they are on a
diet of cinnamon and rice. Willie gave them too much
sugar and water. He likes to see them stand on their
hind legs and drink it out of a pop bottle. Shot half a
dozen frogs yesterday, but I don't think they are any
of the ones you had shipped from New Orleans.
Onazim wouldn't clean them but Willie did and he
cut them around the waist and pulled the skin inside
out and it made a perfect pair of pants. Mummy
couldn't look when he did it, but she did think the
pants were pretty.

We are going to make a movie but its going to be
hard without any hero, mummy said we can't have
any of the guides as a hero, they are a bit old any
way, so I guess we'll have to make up Blacky or Miss
Nick to be one.

We went down to see Mrs. Rowley and I picked all
her pansies, Mummy was horrified but Mrs. Rowley
said they'd bloom all the more so I picked them all.

We went up Rat River, but I think Mr. Sauer beat
us to it. We didn't get a rise. How long do you think
it will be before you come up we miss you don't start
the other show right away. Jack sent us some records,
but I cant say much for them he and Mother like
all that dreary stuff. We are sending some of them
back and some we already have.

I'm glad Whoopee is a success. Write me a letter
and I'll write again soon. Hope we have good hunt-
ing. Mummy won't walk in with us, she just sits in

MENAGERIE 191

the canoe and cries when she hears us shooting. I
don't understand it, she can shoot a target just swell,
and she loves to eat the partridge especially fried
with the quince jelly the way you do them. The mail
boat is just docking and I'll give this to Emile, Ar-
mand is going back with him and come back to-
morrow there is going to be a party in the village
and we wont be using the boat. I drove it yesterday
and docked it too, and I didn't hit a thing. I can't go
out in my canoe by myself, won't you wire mummy
that its all right, Tm just getting so I can paddle
without changing sides.

all my love and kisses

Patty

Those were the fine days. They did not come all
together. They never came consecutively for me: I
have telescoped several years in the foregoing ac-
counts of Burkely Crest and the camp. For in spite
of the wonderful things we had and enjoyed, "Gone
with the Wind" pleasures I now realize they were,
whims and parties and extravagances of an era that
was actually not so long ago, only a handful of years,
but which now seem to belong in another century.
For there was always in my mind the conviction
that I was not being true to myself, that I had not
yet attempted the tasks that I must try in the theater.
I was gnawed constantly by the realization that I
must be an actress now or never at all.

Motion picture work I did do. The Famous Players-
Lasky studio was on Fifty-seventh Street in those

192 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

days, with another studio in Astoria. I starred, I sup-
pose, in about a dozen silent pictures. Thomas Mei-
ghan was one of my leading men. Montagu Love
was another. Walter Wanger was one of our verv
young executives. I recall the work, six or seven
weeks on a picture, locations on Long Island, at
Rupert Hughes' country place for ice-skating scenes,
and in various New York lofts for interiors. But if
serious students of the cinema wish to examine those
pictures, or even to discover their names, they will
have to go through Jesse Lasky's oldest files. I barely
remember them.

Flo, to be sure, had an interest in pictures too.
It was his notion, so abundantly borne out years too
late to profit him or me, that musical shows would
be fine screen fare. He tried to market a production
of Glorifying the American Girl, but producers of
that time turned away from it.

Flo tried to help me. He sought a young matinee
idol named Douglas Fairbanks to do a play with
me, but was disconcerted to learn that Fairbanks
had left for Hollywood. Flo was really puzzled.
"Gone to California. I wonder why?" he complained.

Finally, that elegant actor and astute producer
Henry Miller, who was a kind of neighbor of ours
in the country, found a play for me. Henry's chief
star and virtually his coproducer then was Ruth
Chatterton, but Miss Chatterton was on the road
in a highly successful show and Henry wanted to
go right ahead with his new costume play, Marriage
of Convenience.

MENAGERIE 193

At weary last it seemed that I was headed back,
importantly, for the theater. I thought for a while
that Flo's career and my career could gallop suc-
cessfully side by side and that at the same time we
could be good parents.

15. FOLLIES OF 1918

Marriage of Convenience was the revival of a
comedy in four acts by Sidney Grundv and
was one of the most handsomely produced plays I
ever had. It was the first period play that New York
had seen for several years and my own costumes
were so fine and so elaborate that once again I en-
joyed that warm, good sensation of hearing bursts
of applause on my entrances— no matter if they were
applauding the new dress and not me. We had quite
a time with our wardrobes for that production.

Mr. Miller gave me carte blanche, never sniffing
at expenses, not even when I spent one hundred
and twenty-five dollars for a lace handkerchief.

"What a nice kerchief," he said dryly, fluffing it
with a forefinger. "Just carry it, dear, don't use it."

But Miss Chatterton had undertaken to supervise
costumes and as a result, although her taste was im-
peccable and her theatrical instinct invaluable, there
were several interesting arguments. Miss Chatterton
had a special interest in the costumes because she
was going to do the play later on the road. Unfor-
tunately we were not precisely the same type. Then
Mr. Miller had a complaint.

In designing his costume, Miss Chatterton span-
gled him with diamonds until his shirt front shim-

194

Follies of 1918 195

mered like a waterfall. Henry protested but Ruth
was adamant. Finally, complaining that he was
blinded by his own gems, he connived with Flo,
whom he asked to sit in the front row for dress
rehearsal.

"How'd it go, Flo?" Henry asked when the final
curtain had dropped.

"Good show, good show, Henry," said Flo, reading
his lines like a well-rehearsed actor, "but my God,
man, those sparklers! Are you supposed to be Dia-
mond Jim Brady?"

Miss Chatterton overheard this as she was meant
to, and for opening night Henry was allowed to
remove most of the jewelry.

Henry Miller, as I say, never objected to expenses.
He was the amateur farmer who maintained a large
dairy upstate, producing milk "that ought to be
good; it costs me two dollars and fifty cents a glass."

It was a good play with Lowell Sherman, Lucile
Watson and Frank Kemble Cooper in the cast. We
opened cold in New York, drew excellent reviews,
and it seemed to me for a while that I had again
established myself where I thought I belonged— as
an actress in well-written, high-comedy plays. Nine-
teen-eighteen was a good year all around: Flo had
a magnificent edition of the Follies, George Arliss
was playing Hamilton with Jeanne Eagels as his lead-
ing woman; Lionel Barrymore was a hit in The Cop-
perhead, Pauline Lord was acting in The Deluge,
and Teddy Roosevelt, as good an actor as any of us,
was appearing all over town, starting tumults in

196 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

theaters merely by sitting in the orchestra. When
pointed out, he would make a speech.

Old-timers of the theater often insist that the
Follies of 1919 was the best of all. Indeed that was
a fabulous show, so well integrated, so precisely
timed, and so colorful. But the 1918 edition is the
one that crowds my memory. This was the Follies
in which Marilyn Miller first appeared, walking down
those long, glorious stairs in a mock minstrel cos-
tume and displaying legs that I believe have never
been matched for sheer slim, provocative beauty.
Miss Pennington was famed for the pretty knees,
and Mistinguette had wonderful ankles, but Marilyn
—I think Marilyn had everything. Now, an ordinary
show, I believe, would have stopped there, letting
the audience revel in the surprise of this new and
delightful girl, but Flo, who they said despised com-
edy, inserted Fannie Brice into that act, placed her
in an aisle seat as if she were part of the audience,
and turned her loose to make zany comments. The
effect was staggering. Audiences were exhausted
between the double impacts of beauty and laughter.

Unless memory fails me, it was for the 1918
Follies that Irving Berlin wrote one of his most fa-
mous songs. The point is not the date, but how he
happened to write the song. Irving had completed
his score and, like everyone else who worked for
Ziegfeld, was in a state of total collapse, determined
to retire to a cave in the hills. But Flo insisted, as
he always insisted, on a little more.

Follies of 1918 197

"Just one more song, Irving," he wheedled. "A
little song/'

"No more," said Irving. "I'm written out."

"Oh, I just want a small one, just a snatch to bring
the girls on."

That was Ziegfeld. They said he paced his whole
show around getting the girls on.

Badgered and weary, Irving retired to his room
and wrote a little song to bring the girls on and it
was, of course, that great tune, "A Pretty Girl Is
Like a Melody."

Booth Tarkington, the gay and very gallant gen-
tleman from Indiana, came into our lives at about
this time, enriched it with his wit and kindness, and
gave me two fine plays, The Intimate Strangers and
Rose Briar, both of which Flo produced in associa-
tion with A. L. Erlanger and Charlie Dillingham.
But what happened was that the three producers
handed over the production to Tarkington. Never-
theless, Erlanger used to wander in during rehearsals
and make small suggestions. These were harmless
and Booth always amiably pretended that he had
been greatly helped in his work.

For The Intimate Strangers we included in the
cast those excellent actors Alfred Lunt and Glenn
Hunter, Elizabeth Patterson, a most gifted actress,
and the lovely Frances Howard, who played the part
of a flapper. Miss Howard had unusually fine hair
and was immensely distressed about it during the
tryout period. She used to come to my dressing room
and weep about it.

198 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

"Mr. Tarkington wants me to cut my hair short for
the part," she would say, "and I'm afraid to do it, I
may not be good enough, I may not get the part, and
then I shall be ruined." But Frances did cut her hair,
did get the part, and played it wonderfully well.
Today she is known as Mrs. Sam Goldwyn, one of
Hollywood's most gracious and most beautiful host-
esses.

Tarkington was as happy as a clam at high tide ( a
phrase he taught me) when he was allowed to pro-
duce plays. So many fine writers never reveal their
humor in ordinary conversation, but Tarkington al-
ways did, never holding back a good line because he
thought he could sell it in manuscript the next week.
He was a Beau Brummel, thoughtful and kind to
everyone. He directed his plays expertly, claiming
to have learned how at Princeton, and we had a fine
run of 91 performances with The Intimate Strangers
in New York in addition to a good road tour.

When I went on tour I was accompanied by Pat-
ricia, a nurse, two maids, three dogs, and a car with
my faithful chauffeur Ernest. Since we spent two
weeks to a month in each city we played in, I always
engaged an apartment or a house. By now, these
things seemed normal and routine. How else, indeed,
should an actress travel? Today I almost blush to set
down the facts, but they are part of the era, a glit-
tering era now vanished like a dream. But it was a
good thing at that that I took my own cook. She
managed somehow to keep Alfred Lunt alive.

Mr. Lunt was in love with Lynn Fontanne. As a

Follies of 1918 199

result of his passion he did not eat. My cook, who was
extraordinarily sympathetic with romantic passions,
determined to feed Alfred if it killed him, and in the
process of sustaining him she accomplished almost
precisely that. My kitchen was teeming and steam-
ing at all hours with special delicacies intended to
tempt our loyer to nourish himself.

Sometimes he nibbled, but for the most part Alfred
was concerned hourly with preparations for his wed-
ding. His trousseau was a matter of the yastest im-
portance to him. He stayed up late at night examining
his new socks, shirts and dressing gowns, hoping that
Miss Linnie would like them, and frequently aroused
me at odd hours of the early morning to plead for
approyal of some new piece of haberdashery. Oh,
that man was really in loye! As I shall prove to you.

His trousseau ready at last and arrangements
made, Alfred married Miss Linnie in Atlantic City
before the matinee performance. Lynn was as poised
as she always is, but poor Alfred barely managed to
mutter a "yes" to the parson. We can attest that he
got that out, for we overheard it, but that was the
last word that Alfred said until the next morning.
His voice left him immediately. His eves took on a
glaze, and he walked in silence. He worked his jaw,
but no sounds emerged.

We got him to the theater and pushed him on
stage, but still our Alfred could not utter. His lips
moved, he went through his pantomime, but his
vocal chords were paralyzed. During the various
scenes our stage manager was compelled to hide

200 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

behind the stove or crawl under couches to read
Alfred's lines, a procedure that got me slightly dizzy.
It was like working with a ventriloquist. I never
knew where the voice was coming from.

Of course there are instances, many of them, in
which husbands have lost their voices immediately
after the marriage ceremony, and some have never
recovered, but this is the only time anything like
that ever happened to an actor.

Alfred has been famously articulate ever since. He
was a delightful man to play opposite. His distin-
guished voice never failed him again, and his lu-
minous brown eyes, with their always-startled
expression, positively seemed to brighten the stage
when he came on.

My other Tarkington play, Rose Briar, seemed to
me to be a charming production; it had a distin-
guished cast with Frank Conroy and Julia Hoyt, and
a song, "Love and the Moon" by Jerry Kern which
gained considerable popularity, but somehow this
production missed the mark. Still it was not a finan-
cial loss. We played 88 performances in New York.
I have been unusually lucky in the theater, never
having had a play so poorly received that it had to
be closed within a week, as so often happens to
even the best actors and producers, but some of my
shows, let us say, were better than others.

Annie Dear, which Flo also produced, was one that
was not so good, although even this one played 103
performances. Flo had gone to great pains to con-
trive an amusing musical around "Good Gracious,

Follies of 1918 201

Annabelle." a story by Clare Kummer. but he was
restricted bv the terms of the contract and was not
able to add anv scenes or musical numbers save
those written b\- Miss Kummer. A Ziegfeld show
without added scenes and added numbers is simply
not a Ziegfeld show at all. And in addition to that,
the plain truth of the matter is that I did not have
enough voice really to do mv share musically. I
could sins; smaller songs successfully enough, but
the burden of carrying a big musical with whopping
big song numbers is a burden that can be hoisted
only by professional singers with voices like pipe
organs. And so. in spite of the skillful foolishness of
Ernest Truex and a big. fine cast. Annie Dear cannot
be set down as a milestone in the theater.

The Rescuing Angel was another attempt bv Flo
to be mv producer. We sot bv. but this one came
close to being a real failure. Caesar's Wife, a new
Somerset Maugham play in which Flo presented me.
with Norman Trevor as leading man. was consider-
ably better due. I think, to Willie Maugham's wit.
but it was not significant in my search for the proper
plays. I began to spend a great deal more time at
Burkelv Crest.

As my star flickered. Flo's activities in the theater
assumed even greater importance. He was so busy
and his enterprises were so enormous that mv inter-
rupted career, although he occasionally tried to set
it straight, began to swing exclusively in a tight little
orbit around his. And two other things kept me away
from the theater.

202 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

As a small child, Pat was not strong. She required
constant attention. That is why I took her on several
tours with me and not because of theatrical careless-
ness. And Mother was not well. I shall always bless
Flo for his kindness to her. They were the closest of
friends, completely understood each other, and were
entirely alike in that both were so easy to please if
you only understood what they wanted: they wanted
the best.

Since Mother could no longer go up and down
stairs, we provided another house for her on the
place, where she lived with her own cook and two
nurses. She suffered from diabetes, for which little
could be done in those days; that remarkable Cana-
dian researcher had not yet come across insulin. I
often think today how much more fortunate invalids
are now than they were a comparatively few years
ago. Today they can be entertained by radio, records,
television, and even motion pictures projected on
ceilings. But in the late 'teens and twenties, there
was only the Victrola and the player piano. Never-
theless, Flo exerted himself constantly with gifts and
jokes and little kindnesses. I am so very grateful to
him for making Mother's last days such happy days.
He always made her birthday a sparkling thing.
Hundreds of colored balloons would arrive for the
parties he gave in her honor, and on several occa-
sions he sent out the full orchestra from his roof to
play for her.

Mother died while I was playing in The Intimate
Strangers in Baltimore. We closed for three days and

Follies of 1918 203

then I resumed my tour, not eagerly but grateful
that I had something intense to do. It is the best
thing, always. My thoughts went back then, as they
do now so often, to the days when I was dependent
for everything upon this fine woman who might have
made so much of her own life but preferred to give
herself to me. I have seen mothers seem to give them-
selves to their children completely, in what appeared
to be noble self-sacrifice, while what they were really
accomplishing was the binding of offspring to them
with suffocating hoops of selfishness. I need not em-
phasize that my mother did not do that. She was
firm and wise and let me go my own way when the
time came.

At Burkely Crest we revolved like little moons
around Flo's sun, avoiding the heat when we could.
Flo enjoyed doing business at all hours and from an
eminence. The eminence was his large bed, which he
had placed on a dais. From there he would telephone
everybody on whom he could make a demand in
show business, driving his composers and designers,
badgering his writers at 4 a. m., and bedeviling his
press agents. He made thousands of notes at high
speed, jabbing his pencils so fiercely that he invar-
iably broke them, then hurling them across the room
in anger. The pencils flew so fast that they sometimes
resembled flights of arrows unleashed by a company
of yeomen. All of us, the servants and whoever was
in the house at the time, scurried to provide more pen-
cils.

204 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Flo was always intensely mortified when any
member of his staff had the effrontery to leave him.
Bernard Sobel, now a distinguished public relations
counsel in New York, once resigned and Flo im-
mediately set about wooing him back with vitupera-
tion and flattery. He sent him this telegram:

I FORGIVE YOU FOR LEAVING ME PERHAPS NEXT
TIME YOUR WORD WILL BE GOOD I WILL TRY TO DO
ALL MY OWN PRESS WORK HEREAFTER AS I HAVE
NOTHING TO DO AND CAN THUS SAVE THREE SEVENTY
FD7E WEEKLY PLUS FIFTY DOLLARS FOR EACH SHOW
IN ALL FOUR TWENTY FIVE WEEKLY THAT IS WHAT
I HAVE ASKED KINGSTON TO PAY YOU I HOPE YOUR
POOR NERVES WILL SOON GET RESTED AFTER YOU
LEAVE ME I SUPPOSE YOU ARE ALREADY EATING
NOTHING BUT MATZOTH PLEASE SEND ME SLX BOXES
ON 6:40 TRAIN TONIGHT WHEN DO YOU MOVE TO
YOUR ABIE'S HUSH ROSE QUARTERS IN THE BRONX
GOOD LUCK MY POOR MISGUIDED BEST PRESS AGENT
IN THE WORLD

ZIEGFELD

I think Bernie stayed away anyway, wise man.
But he has always been my fine and helpful friend.

Flo took as much interest in my clothes as I did
and was difficult to keep out of my dressing room.
He knew, it seemed, all about beauty aids and liked
to supervise. One of his prescriptions was entertain-
ing, if not effective.

Follies of 1918 205

Flo insisted that the only proper way for a red-
head to rinse her hair was in imported champagne.
Since this was so, he purchased cases of the best
sparkling wine, which he himself would pour on my
hair after my shampoo. So far as I know, this remark-
able treatment was no more beautifying than Anna
Held's fictitious milk baths, but it was fun to lick up
as much as I could as the champagne dripped down
my chin.

My chance to return to the theater in a play of
major importance in a role that I could have acted
to my credit came suddenly during one of my quiet
seasons, with an offer from Gilbert Miller. I had
been waiting and hoping for something like this. I
recognized it, and I knew beyond any question that
I should accept. The play that Mr. Miller had in
mind was The Swan by Molnar.

"I must do this," I told Flo.

"No good. No," he said. But he knew. He knew
what this Molnar play, under the meticulous produc-
tion that Miller would give it at the Empire Theater,
would mean for me. He knew, too, that I understood
his reasons for objecting. He had produced plays
for me, and although none of them had failed, none
of them had advanced me. He was jealous of Gilbert
Miller.

Our arguments about this were athletic. I broke
some china. I swept a whole sideboard bare of
chinaware and I shrilled about my career.

But Flo was calm and sullen. I did not get to do
The Swan. Instead, Eva Le Gallienne did it in a

206 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

magnificent production which added significantly to
her laurels.

This was my chance and I lost it. Immediately
afterwards, Flo admitted that he had been wrong.
This is the only instance I know in which he ever
admitted to anybody that he was wrong about any-
thing, and the measure of his wrong-headedness
about this can be judged by the admission.

16. HIGH STAKES

Between 1927 and 1930 I did three plays, The
Marquise, Happy Husbands, and The Truth
Game. I did them with pleasure and I won, perhaps,
a little acclaim, and I made a little money, but I was
a part-time actress, a part-time artist, a part-time
professional. The very terms contradict themselves,
of course, for there is no such thing as a part-time
artist. An artist is a person who devotes himself
ruthlessly, even selfishly, to his craft or his skill, for-
getting every other consideration, and the measure
of his integrity as an artist is, I think, not whether
the critics find his works well done but whether he
has given his art his full devotion. And the hard lines
of that definition are the barriers which make it
supremely difficult for women to be artists. I wanted
to be an artist then, as I do now, but in those years I
had another job. It was simply to hold my husband.
For some time now, as I have told my story, I have
said nothing about this, but it was always there. It
was always there, this swelling uncertainty, some-
times casual, sometimes merely amusing— Flo Zieg-
feld could make almost anything amusing— but
sometimes bleak and frightening. Someone, Mr.
Shaw probably, once said that marriage is attractive
because it provides the maximum of temptation plus

207

208 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

the maximum of opportunity; an astute observation.
But I had not been married for many months before
I came to consider that the entire Follies possessed
both maximums so far as my husband was concerned.

After a few years went by I learned to pigeonhole
the Ziegfeld girls. In some instances I had nothing to
worry about. On the whole, I fretted more about
certain society women, cool, wealthy women with
pale, beautiful hands, lovely houses, and Indian
servants to pass around the coffee. Flo, I am com-
pelled to report, preferred these women, cocked his
eyes appreciatively at their elegant possessions, and
even learned to play expert bridge in order to enter-
tain them. But the Misses Olive Thomas and Marilyn
Miller were the ladies I had to be emphatically con-
cerned with. Miss Miller is part of the story, part of
the record, and I have promised to be frank.

She was, I think, the vision of perfection, repre-
senting in beautiful flesh all the things that all his life
Flo Ziegfeld had sought to dramatize. She summed
up and symbolized the grace and joy which, forget-
ting details, were what he reached for in everything
he staged. She was, as every male with reasonable
eyesight knew, extraordinarily enticing, special.
Moreover, and do not think that this too did not
appeal to Ziegfeld, she was willing to work the eight-
een hours every day that were necessary to keep
that perfection special.

Flo recognized this and every night she danced
he provided a brand-new costume at one hundred
and seventy-five dollars per costume. He recognized

HIGH STAKES 209

it when he had her dressing room done over by the
same decorator who did my home, only in Miss
Miller's instance the entire room was in point d'esprit
over satin.

I should prefer to think that Flo was merely fasci-
nated by Marilyn Miller, but something else was the
fact: he idolized her, and before long everybody
knew it.

Flo sailed for Europe in the summer of 1922,
Marilyn went out on tour, and I returned from travel-
ing with The Intimate Strangers to find my front
lawn swarming with reporters.

"What about the divorce?" they said. "Did you
see Miss Miller's statement?"

Marilyn had given out an interview in Boston. She
said that she had to lock her dressing-room door at
all times to keep Flo out. She said that he was des-
perately in love with her and would marry her if I
would step aside. She claimed that all that held him
was Patricia.

"She waves her baby at him like George M. Cohan
waves the American flag," they quoted Marilyn.

Now that was a smart line, but I never believed
Marilyn thought it up herself.

Booth Tarkington stood by me in Kennebunkport,
Maine, that summer while everyone waited for me
to divorce Flo. Booth steadied me, and I made up
my mind. I had to make it up in spite of newspaper
stories and in spite of many advisers who at once
set themselves up as domestic relations counselors.
I decided that I did not want a divorce.

210 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

I hope I can make myself clear about this. There
were several things I knew for certain then and I
have never changed my mind. One of the things I
knew was that Flo loved me, and that he loved his
home and his family. He was what he was. And I
knew that he did not love Marilyn Miller. He adored
her— as a perfect actress.

Moreover ( and this will seem like curious thinking
to anyone not in some close way associated with the
theater), I knew what a valuable asset Marilyn
Miller was to Flo. I did not want him to lose her as
an actress.

And those are the reasons, debated for so many
years by so many persons, I am sorry to say, why I
did not leave Flo. I have never before said a word
about this, certainly not in print, and not even to
my closest friends. But that is how it was.

I cabled to Flo in Europe, told him all I had heard
and all that I knew, and demanded that he return
home at once so that we could make a plan. I said to
him when he arrived, "Let's not try to make this
thing up if there is only a slim chance. Unless you
know in your heart that you want to go on with our
marriage—"

This was as serious a moment as we had ever faced
together, but my husband was Flo Ziegfeld and he
stayed absolutely in character. He reached in his
pocket and handed me a twenty-thousand-dollar
diamond bracelet from Tiffany's. Unwrapped, of
course.

I snatched the bauble from him and flung it into

HIGH STAKES 211

a corner. Flo did not flick an eyelash to see where it
went, but I was not that daft. I saw where it went,
and today Patricia wears it occasionally.

This was not the first time or the last time that we
had violent scenes. Once before, when Flo returned
to Burkely Crest at 5 a. m., I crept downstairs to find
him calmly raiding the icebox. He declined to explain
where he had been, which was probably just as well,
and as I quarreled at him my eye lit on an enormous
silver soup tureen and ladle. I seized the ladle and
belabored him about the head and shoulders with
it. Flo merely laughed, took the ladle away from me
and carried me upstairs in his arms. I think he rather
liked being hit with a jealous soup ladle.

But it was not my cunning or my charm or my
courage that disposed of the Marilyn Miller mirage
for good and all. In fiction, in Hollywood, in the
vignettes composed by Broadway columnists, things
end completely and dramatically with some violent
or pathetic episode. I think this is seldom so in actu-
ality. The truth about me is that I went on, hopeful
but unsure, and the truth about Marilyn Miller is
that with all her fairylike beauty she lived a tragic
life. Her story is not my story to tell, but I suppose
most persons recall that her first husband was killed
in an automobile accident, and that she was divorced
from Jack Pickford. She missed important rehearsals
for Smiles, Flo's great show which should have been
a hit in 1930, and she became less and less— and very
quickly less and less— the joyful sprite that Ziegfeld
idolized. His interest waned.

212 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

If Marilyn had been a success in Smiles, which
Fred and Adele Astaire tried so gallantly to save,
there is no telling how matters would have worked
out for her, and for me, and for Flo.

I never met her. That was because I planned it
that way. Once Flo tried to invite her to a party in
Palm Beach but I blocked that invitation with an
ultimatum. For that matter, I never met Olive
Thomas or Lillian Lorraine or Anna Held, and for
obvious reasons. But they were beautiful women, no
man could be blamed for loving them, and certainly
I bear them no grudge now.

I'm inclined to think women make a lugubrious
mistake when they assume that the questing male's
chief aim in life is the key to their boudoir. A man
often prefers a cold bottle of beer, or a war. And some
like gambling.

During the twenties we began to go to Florida.
We were influenced by Charlie Dillingham, who had
built a fine home at Palm Beach for his witty Irish
wife, the beautiful Aileen, and who introduced us
around. At first we took a small cottage, mostly for
Pat's benefit, for she was a delicate child with one
of those acidosis ailments which the medicos seem
to cope with so successfully now. During our first
season in Florida the long, droning, sun-lit days in
and out of the water were peaceful and healthful,
and Pat improved, grew ruddy and rugged, and
eventually was a buxom little girl with red cropped
hair.

C/5

C

—

o

<0

O

HIGH STAKES 213

Nodded to by society, through Charlie's introduc-
tions and through families we knew in New York,
we went to the beautiful estates that graced Palm
Beach so lavishly in the twenties, before the crash,
to parties at which ninety guests would be asked
for a sit-down dinner. The most interesting was the
home of the gracious Mrs. Stotesbury, queen of Palm
Beach and Philadelphia society.

The Stotesbury parties were gay and splendid.
Everyone had handfuls of money to spend, the world
was a place created just for fun, and Flo Ziegfeld, of
all people in the world in this peculiar era, was the
best-equipped man for having that fun. A hostess
often brought down a famous opera singer for a
private concert at a fee of ten thousand dollars and
thought no more of that fee than we did of patron-
izing the best bootlegger. There was fishing on a
grand scale, safari by water comparable to big game
hunting, there were treasure hunts, dances and
musicales.

There were no tedious reformers in our circle to
remind us that in China thousands of human beings
were struggling for a handful of rice a week, or that
mass man was responding to ugly new ideologies in
Japan and Russia and Germany— or even to suggest
to us that some of our American notions of grab and
exploit were based on shaky logic. We would not
have believed it anyway. But I cannot truthfully say
that I am sorry I was there. The Roaring Twenties
were very pleasant if you did not stop to think.

214 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

I recall a birthday party we gave for Flo. This, of
course, was after we had moved from our first modest
cottage, had taken a vast house on Jungle Road, had
acquired large boats and expert crews to run them,
and had swung into the swirl of Palm Beach enter-
tainment. We had elaborate costumes sent down
from New York and selected eight groups of friends
to represent one of Flo's productions: the Follies, Kid
Boots, Sally, Rosalie, Show Boat, The Three Musket-
eers, Rio Rita and a production he had in mind for
Marilyn Miller, to be called Joan of Arc.

The sumptuously costumed mummers made their
entrance into a patio at the Everglades Club. Mar-
jorie Post Davies, in Show Boat, was by far the most
beautiful person in the pageant. I was one of the
Three Musketeers with Joe Webber on one side and
the handsome Tony Biddle on the other. We ap-
peared as Athos, Pathos, and Bathos.

Even at today's remarkable prices I suspect that
a large family could eat steak for a year on what that
party cost, with all its champagne, Scotch, caviar and
special dishes flown down from New York. I am
ashamed to say it.

And now our Mr. Ziegfeld began to find that Brad-
ley's, the most elegant and carefully conducted gam-
bling salon in the world, was a most attractive place.
Mr. Bradley ostensibly conducted an establishment
open to the public, but he supervised it so thought-
fully that any shrinking lady could gamble there all
afternoon without fear of being annoyed or of being
publicized. But Flo gambled at night. All night.

HIGH STAKES 215

His were the most spectacular stakes, naturally.
He would win or lose fifty thousand dollars in an
evening, sitting dour-faced and silent at the roulette
wheel hours after everyone else had gone home,
determined to break the bank, determined to be the
best.

This would often happen when we had guests and
I would be embarrassed, for like an alcoholic, Flo
was just about impossible to reason with when these
gambling moods were upon him. In an effort to be
casual— that is, to appear casual about it— I would
ride over from our house on my bicycle, stand timidly
at the door until I caught his attention, then plead
with him in whispers.

Flo could see me without glancing up. "Go away,
dear," he would say. "I'm busy. I'll come home later."

Usually, he did not come. Usually, I pedaled shak-
ily back home, tears dropping, lurching from side to
side, often running into ditches, sobbing as I tried
to balance. I was annoyed and hurt and I was also
struck by the irony of having survived all I had
survived only to lose my husband to a roulette wheel.

Irving Berlin, who was often our guest in Palm
Beach, wrote a ballad celebrating my plight. It was
called "The Gambler's Bride," but the words, I am
sorry to say, have now been forgotten both by Irving
and by me.

I did not take this excessive gambling lightly. In-
deed I did not. I stormed and wept and I threw a
thing or two, but Flo had got so he liked my tempers;

216 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

for the sheer perverse, husbandly humor of it, he
would often incite me just for the sake of a reaction.
And so he smoked and smiled and made infuriating
small remarks and went right on gambling.

I came closer to leaving Flo on account of Brad-
ley's than for any other reason. After one of our most
outrageous scenes, I engaged a suite in a hotel in
St. Augustine, informed my cook, nurse, upstairs
maid and parlor maid that we were going, and told
them why, warning each of them that if I saw one
tear in anybody's eye there would be ructions. They
all played their parts beautifully and pretended they
were pleased at giving it all up, and so we were
packed and on our way when the most persuasive
man in the world insisted that we take a little walk
on the beach to talk things over.

I knew immediately that I had made a mistake.
I didn't want to leave. Flo could gamble away the
New Amsterdam Theater, Burkely Crest and every-
thing we owned and I did not care. But I had made
my move and I had, apparently, learned a little from
Flo about the art of gambling. I knew that I could
not let him call my bluff. I told him flatly, firmly, and
with all the finality that I could summon, calling on
my skill as an actress, that he had to stop gambling
or this was the end of everything. I told him that he
had to stop now, no matter whether he was winning
or losing, and that he had to stay stopped.

It must have been one of my best scenes. I must
have played it with conviction. Flo promised and I
had no more trouble with him that year.

HIGH STAKES 217

In 1930 our agenda included going from Palm
Beach to California by way of New Orleans. Flo and
Sam Goldwyn had made an arrangement for the
production of Whoopee as a motion picture. With
sound so new, musicals were not yet important in
Hollywood and few persons there had any experi-
ence in making them. It would seem, then, that a
producer of Ziegfeld's stature would have been wel-
comed, especially since he was concerned with his
own show, but the Hollywood point of view was
that no outsider knew anything about making pic-
tures. Sam produced a lavish, beautiful version of
Whoopee without Flo's advice, and Flo thereupon
lost interest in pictures. He was badly advised at this
time. Looking back from the wise vantage of today
it is easy to see that Flo Ziegfeld should by all means
have wooed Hollywood. Still, we had fun.

Jack Harkrider, who designed costumes for Flo,
had found us a cottage in the Outpost district, but
Flo, with his sure instinct for the lavish, immediately
discarded this and established us in the Marion
Davies villa across the tennis court from the baronial
William Randolph Hearst mansion on the beach at
Santa Monica. And then began a round of entertain-
ment. There was Norma Shearer and her brilliant
husband Irving Thalberg, who seemed so youthful
to be head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but then,
Norma herself seemed little more than a child. And
there was Paulette Goddard, who had played on the
roof for Flo, and Harpo Marx, and Clara Bow and
Hoot Gibson, Kay Francis, the glamorous Constance

218 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Bennett— and Frances Goldwyn, who had worried so
about cutting off her hair for the Tarkington play.
But Flo when asked by Louella Parsons picked Sally
Eilers as the prettiest girl in Hollywood.

Everybody gave parties, Mr. and Mrs. Louis B.
Mayer were neighbors, William Randolph Hearst
was a charming host, Marion was lovely and thought-
ful, Jerry Kern and Joseph Urban were on hand, Will
Rogers was in residence at his ranch and invited us
out often to ride, and we enjoyed the Louis Brom-
fields, although Mr. Bromfield was a harassed man
trying to fit his particular free genius into the tight
requirements of motion pictures.

Lilyan Tashman was in high fettle, quite as beauti-
ful as when she had played at the Century Theater
for Flo, and Nita Naldi was equally lovely. Frankly,
I was terrified of all these world-famous people, and
I was frightened of them even when we entertained
them at home at "little" luncheons of forty or fifty
guests. My greatest pleasure was Will Rogers' ranch
where I could escape to the hills, and where we en-
joyed lots of fresh vegetables and good Oklahoma
food. We would sit in their great living room when it
grew cold outside in the evenings. Will would talk
a little and fiddle with his rope, and the children
would laugh.

Those family moments with the Rogers were the
best of all.

Of my plays during these three seasons, The Mar-
quise was by Noel Coward, which means that it was

HIGH STAKES 219

smart, but The Truth Game was the most important
to me. It came at a time when I felt more than ever
that I needed to get back to the theater. It was made
possible for me bv those two brilliant, excellent old
friends, Constance Collier and Ivor Xovello, and it
marked the first time that I played a character part.
Oh, tiiat sad and bewildering moment when you are
no longer the cherished darling but must turn the
corner and try to be funny! This was when I turned
die corner. It was an imposing corner for me. because
I have had to trv to be funny ever since.

I had enjoyed knowing Ivor for years, and I had
seen a lot of Constance during her brave fight to
produce Peter Ibbctson. the play that no one would
touch for twenty years. She finally put it on with
John and Lionel B anymore and made a tremendous
success of it. Constance helped Ivor stage The Truth
Game and did it beautifully. We opened at the Ethel
Barn-more Theater. I plaved a gay little lady, our
show was well received, and suddenlv. for the first
time my earnings became vitally important to the
Zierfeld family.

As vou will recall if vou are one who knew that
bleak Depression, the stock market went out of hand
in '29 and oO. I had got Flo out of Bradlev's bv
strategy and tears. But Wall Street was something
I knew utterlv nothing about. Flo was in it far deeper
than I had anv idea.

17. THE CRASH

Flo's Wall Street speculations, like his show busi-
ness affairs and like his gambling, were matters
I never understood. It was hard to tell the difference
and I doubt, really, if there was any difference. Flo
never, to my knowledge, invested in anything, was
never concerned with yield. He was interested only
in coups. I did not know what was going on for two
reasons: first, he did not tell me, and second, I have
never been able to understand statistics, or double
entry bookkeeping, or financial statements any more
than I apprehend the fine print in insurance policies
or the asterisks in timetables. Here, for instance, is
a cash statement between Flo and E. L. Erlanger
setting forth the costs of the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927.
It shows that the Urban Studios were paid
$25,031.06; that $123,096.23 was spent for costumes;
that salaries before the opening came to $15,828;
that "tights from Paris" amounted to $2,329.40. And
the total before a seat was sold was $289,035.35. So
that is what it cost to produce a typical Ziegfeld
Follies, not including the salaries of between $1,000
and $5,000 a week he paid his principals. At the time
these sums were being spent I was less aware of them
than I was of our laundry bills. It cost us, not includ-
ing entertainment, travel, Palm Beach and such ex-

220

THE CRASH 221

tras, about $10,000 a month to operate Burkely
Crest.

Flo's stock-market operations were on the pro-
digious side too. He never discussed them with me,
but I have a statement from E. F. Hutton & Company
as of April, 1928, in which I see that Flo bought and
sold Chrysler Motors, Eaton Axle, and Mexican Sea-
board Oil in lots of from 200 to 1,000 shares and that
he wound up the month with a credit balance of
$167,031.23. So for a while, at least, he seemed to be
making money on the market.

And I had made money. In spite of not having
achieved all that I had set out to do in the theater, I
had laid something by. Although I knew nothing
about speculations or even about investments, my
managers bought municipal bonds and government
securities for me. So that on a smug afternoon in
1929, after one of my counselors had gone over
things with me in kindergarten terms, I hugged my-
self with the realization that I had half a million
dollars, all from my own earnings. It seemed a tidy,
round, unassailable fortune and I took comfort in the
conviction that with that kind of money we were
always safe, and my child's future was secure.

I always waited up for Flo when he had been
working at the theater. One night he came in ex-
tremely late and sat down heavily on the edge of
my bed looking utterly wretched and weary. I had
never seen Flo Ziegfeld like this before. I pulled his
head down and took him into my arms.

"Well, poor old darling, what is it?"

222 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Flo sobbed. They were great, struggling sobs.

"I'm through," he said. "Nothing can save me."

The next afternoon I watched him walking in the
lovely garden he had planted with such care and
taste. His shoulders sagged and his step was uncer-
tain. I knew then that the next step was up to me,
that I must find another play and get back to work,
that I must help my husband. I gave my money to
Flo and it staved off debacle for a few months. Then
we mortgaged Burkely Crest.

Flo lost something more than a million dollars in
the Wall Street unpleasantness of 1929-30. Smiles,
which should have made a great deal of money,
went into debt more than three hundred thousand
dollars.

That last summer with the flowers freshly cut for
every room every day, with the birds, the elephants,
the little monkey and the porcelain antiques which
Flo loved, was a brave show but it was a travesty.
There were times when Flo, sitting late at night in
his great bed on the dais, sending five-hundred-word
telegrams to men he would see first thing in the
morning, reading scripts and maintaining his pres-
tige as the telephone company's most exhausting
client— there were times when it seemed that he
might get his hand in, might take command and
might again produce the enormous, glittering fun-
shows which made fortunes and reputations. He did
produce one more Follies, he revived Show Boat, and
he put on Hot Cha! and these were great shows. But
they did not save him. And Flo was ill. He was ill,

THE CRASH 22 3

and I shall always think that at this time, in many of
his enterprises, he was badly advised by some of his
new associates.

This was a big man. a large, vital, passionate man,
and it was a terrible thine— not pitiful, but terrible

r

P

—to see him ill and to see the dissolution of what in
fact was a kind of empire. True, he seemed to re-
cover himself occasionally but the elan was gone,
the power was temporarilv turned off.

Cantor went off to Hollywood with Flo's full ap-
proval. Indeed. Flo voluntarily turned over Eddie's
contract to Sam Goldwvn because it was obvious
that Eddie's future lay in Holl\~wood. but it was a
loss: an entertainer of the caliber of Eddie Cantor
is worth literallv millions of dollars to the man who
holds the exclusive contract for his services.

Flo was cutting the prices of his Bitter Sweet and
Simple Simon, trying to attract more business. Then
he was ordered to Florida for a short rest to prevent
a complete nervous breakdown. And the trouble with
Smiles began when Vincent Youmans tried to take
his music out of the show and had to be restrained
bv a court order.

I remember the odd. small things that happened
those last few months. It was as if a great tree were
toppling and I was counting stray leaves. Schneider-
Anderson sued Flo for S 17.000 for costume bills
which he had owed for three years. There was a suit
over $721 worth of roses. And another florist sued
for about SI. 000 worth of flowers which, it seemed,

224 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

had been delivered to me, Lili Damita, and beauti-
ful Gladys Glad.

There was a bright spot in 1931. I was in Phila-
delphia with The Truth Game, doing what I could
to bolster the shrinking family income, when Patty,
who was fourteen, came down from the Halstead
School, Yonkers, for the Easter holidays. Ethel Bor-
den, daughter of the J. Borden Harrimans, was play-
ing her first professional engagement, a little part as
a maid, and she fell ill.

We gave Patty her lines quickly. She learned them
at a glance, and went on as the maid for the rest of
the week, distracting the audience with her bright
red hair in a part that was supposed to be unob-
trusive. Flo came down to see her act, applauded
her, and took her back to school. This was my
daughter's first and last appearance on any stage.
Flo never once wanted her to be on the stage.

I have been asked so often why, with all the back-
ground and opportunity she had, she never became
an actress. Well, she just didn't want to be an actress.
She saw the dross behind the glitter, saw her father
work himself to death, and she never gave a fig for
acting.

Flo fell ill of influenza in Pittsburgh on March 3,
1932, when Hot Cha! was playing there with Bert
Lahr and Lupe Velez. Patty and I had gone to Cal-
ifornia months before, I to work in The Vinegar Tree.
In after years I often wondered whether I had done
the right thing. It is foolish conjecture, because you
can never know what some other course would have

THE CRASH 225

led to. But my heart was heavy, trying to weigh
the sharp blows that had begun to fall on us. My in-
stinct was to stay with Flo, to try to make his burden
somewhat lighter, perhaps just by being with him.
Still, he was putting on a new Follies, could not be
home much in any case, and in the end I made my
decision to take a new play. It was an unhappy de-
cision and I later regretted it.

But ill and harassed as he was, Flo had not lost his
genius for arranging things. By remote control he
got us a fine house in Santa Monica, a house with a
living room so large that Will Rogers said all it
needed were goal posts at each end, and it had a
swimming pool and tennis court. It had been built by
M.G.M.'s Cedric Gibbons, who is after all famous
for his designs, and it was both beautiful and com-
fortable.

I have to thank Ivor Novello and Constance Col-
lier for putting me on the road to earning my living
again, for it was the role in The Truth Game which
inspired David Belasco and Homer Curran to give
me The Vinegar Tree. And it was a well-done play,
with Edgar McGregor as our director, Warren Wil-
liams making his debut on the coast, William Janney
and Julie Dillon playing the young folks, and Wil-
liam Morris. I was a little fearful about taking a play
that Mary Boland had performed in so successfully,
but Los Angeles liked us, we had a pleasant run, and
then took the play up to San Francisco for a month.

Flo had seen us off in Chicago, and this was the
saddest parting of all. The rain was beating down

226 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

sorrowfully, the station was chill and dirty, and Flo
held my hands in both of his and said: "It's all going
to come out all right. I'm going to do another Fol-
lies, and everything will be fine." But we had closed
Hastings and I could imagine his creeping up there
on lonely weekends, with no servants, with all the
birds and the china and the silver and the animals
gone. Many of these things were taken by persons
who simply moved in on us and grabbed when our
troubles came.

I believe in premonitions. I knew that nothing
would ever be all right again. I violated my instinct,
overriding my heart with what I argued were prac-
tical considerations when I went away from Flo that
time. I had never thought of the difference in our
ages, but when I left him that damp day in the
Chicago station I realized that all our hopes were
dreams, and the dreams were gone.

Flo went to Pittsburgh to struggle with his new
Follies, which he was trying to get ready for the New
York opening. But you could never feel too far apart
from Flo Ziegfeld if he could lay hands on a tele-
graph blank. The wires started coming immediately
and I shall put some of them down, for they tell a
story:

At 11:17 A. M. he caught me with his first telegram
at Chillicothe, Illinois:

HOPE MY TWO DARLINGS ARE ALL RIGHT IT WAS
VERY HARD TO LET YOU GO DO TRY GET SOME REAL
REST ALL MY LOVE

THE CRASH 227

That afternoon he was in Toledo and his telegram
found me in Kansas City, Missouri:

GOODNIGHT DEAR I MISS MY TWO BABIES PERHAPS
EVERYTHING WILL TURN OUT SUCCESSFUL AND I
WILL SOON BE WITH YOU LOVE EAT AND SLEEP

The next day, May 31, he was in New York and
I was in Albuquerque, and he wired:

BACK IN NEW YORK ALONE WITH A HARD FIGHT TO
WIN I DO HOPE YOU WILL BOTH FIND COMFORT
AND NO WORRY AND I ONLY WISH I COULD BE WITH
YOU PERHAPS SOON HOPE YOU ARE HAVING A FINE
TRIP ALL MY LOVE

On June 12, troubled as he was with all the details
of his new Follies, he was not too busy to see that
Patty's dog Chloto had the best of everything when
he shipped him to California. This wire came from
Hastings, addressed to Patty:

CHLOTO WILL ARRIVE ON THE CHIEF SUNDAY FIVE
OCLOCK CHAPERONED BY JAKE THE BARBERS SON
ALL DINING ROOM STEWARDS HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED
TO SUPPLY THE BEST OF FOOD AND ROOM CHLOTO
WILL BE TAKEN OUT AT EVERY IMPORTANT STOP
MANAGER OF THE RAILROAD WILL ESCORT HIM
FROM THE DEPOT IN CHICAGO LOVE

Again from Hastings, he wired on the same day;

228 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

CHLOTO ARRIVES SUNDAY PROPERLY CHAPERONED,
TONY RIDDLE AND MARGARET SCHULTZ CARLED
THEY WERE MARRIED IN LONDON TODAY. HOPE
EVERYTHING IS ALL RIGHT WE ARE READY TO LEAVE
AT TEN TONIGHT RUT I HAVE PLENTY TO DO REFORE
WE CAN. WILL RE AT NIXON THEATER WILLIAM
PENN HOTEL PITTSRURGH LOVE

Then he hurried into New York and sent another
telegram, same date:

ALL OFF WITH TWO HUNDRED PEOPLE HOW I MAN-
AGED IT IS A MIRACLE LETS HOPE FOR THE REST
WILL RE AT NIXON THEATER PITTSRURGH I MAY
WALK RACK SEND PATTY FDRST SONG PURLISHED
LOVE

The next day, June 13, Flo awakened us in Santa
Monica with a message from Pittsburgh:

GOOD MORNING DARLING ARRIVED WITH TWO HUN-
DRED AND TWO PEOPLE IT WILL RE THREE TERRIFIC
DAYS NOW UNTIL THE OPENING MONDAY WE ARE
ENTIRELY SOLD OUT FOR THE WEEK I WISH I WERE
OUT WITH YOU WHEN I FIGURE WHAT I WILL HAVE
TO GO THROUGH. FRONT PAGE IN ALL PAPERS ALL
MY LOVE

Three days later he thought his new Follies was
the best show he had ever done. He wired from
Pittsburgh:

THE CRASH 229

DARLING IVE HAD AROUT THREE HOURS SLEEP IN
FORTY EIGHT HOURS RUT FROM FINAL REHEARSAL
I THINK IT WILL PRORARLY RE WORTH IT TERRIFIC
RIG SHOW RIGGER THAN ANY I HAVE EVER HAD IN
MY ENTDRE CAREER MATERIAL LOOKS GOOD RUT
YOU NEVER CAN TELL WHATS GOING TO HAPPEN
TONIGHT ALL MY LOVE WISH YOU WERE HERE

The same show was falling to pieces seventy-two
hours later:

DARLING I TRIED TO GET YOU ON PHONE LAST NIGHT
TWO OCLOCK PITTSRURGH TIME RUT YOU AND PA-
TRICIA WERE OUT WE ARE WORKING NIGHT AND DAY
TO PULL THE SHOW TOGETHER I AM ALL IN RUT IT
WDLL SOON RE OVER ALL MY LOVE

Flo felt better on June 27:

WELL THE MOST TERRIRLE TWO WEEKS ARE OVER
THINGS LOOK PRETTY GOOD NOW HOPE YOUR SHOW
ALL RIGHT LET ME KNOW WHEN YOU ARE ROTH AT
SANTA MONICA LOVE I MISS YOU ROTH

From New York July 5:

DARLING IT IS VERY LONESOME HERE TODAY AND I
FELT LIKE CALLING YOU EVERY FP7E MINUTES I
STAYED IN RED ALL DAY TRYING TO GET OVER WHAT
I WENT THROUGH THE LAST SIX WEEKS IN THE

230 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

TERRIFIC HEAT GRATIFYING TO SELL OUT ON
FOURTH OF JULY THE WORST DAY OF THE YEAR
KISS PATTY I MISS YOU BOTH TERRIBLY LOVE

By July 16 he knew that his new show was a hit:

DARLING I WOULD LIKE TO CALL YOU UP EVERY
MINUTE HEAT TODAY IS TERRIFIC YET WE TURNED
HUNDREDS AWAY AT THE MATINEE YOU NEVER
HEARD SUCH APPLAUSE IN A THEATRE NINE DIFFER-
ENT THINGS IN THE SHOW STOP THE SHOW COLD
SO THE NEXT PERSON CANT GO ON WITHOUT RE-
PEATED BOWS UNFORTUNATELY MY COMEDIAN
JACK PEARLS MOTHER DIED LAST NIGHT HE IS OUT
FOR THE MATINEE. TONIGHT WE HAVE THE WORLD
FLYERS AND IRVING THALBERG AND HIS WIFE ARE
COMING HAVING A TERRIBLE TIME GETTING SEATS
FOR THEM. WHEN YOU SEE WELL ROGERS TELL HIM
I EXPECT HIM TO GO IN THE SHOW IN THE FALL
HOPE YOU ARE BOTH WELL ALL MY LOVE

Flo was lonely on July 20:

DARLING I AM TRYING TO ARRANGE MY AFFAIRS
SO AS TO MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO GET AWAY
EVEN IF ONLY FOR A SHORT TIME TO COME OUT
AND SEE MY TWO BABIES I DONT KNOW HOW IT IS
GOING TO BE DONE BUT AM TRYING TO ARRANGE
IT IN SOME WAY ALL MY LOVE

We had been separated longer than we had ever
been apart before. On October 29 Flo found me at

THE CRASH 231

the Broadway Theater, Denver, Colorado with this
telegram:

MISS MY TWO DARLINGS I BELIEVE YOU SHOULD
BOTH FIGURE ON A REST AT PALM SPRINGS I MAY
GET A BREAK AND ABLE TO MEET YOU THERE PAT-
TIE CAN THEN SEE MOTHER GETS PROPER FOOD
I THINK THEY HAVE LITTLE BUNGALOWS THERE I
HATE TO FACE NEW YORK ALL MY LOVE

And for the first time in our eighteen years of mar-
ried life we were not together on Christmas Day.
I wired to Flo:

DARLING TRY NOT MIND D7 YOU JUST KEEP YOUR
COURAGE AND LOVE US AND LOOK TO A HAPPIER
FUTURE WE CAN GET BY THIS AWFUL TIME. PATTY
HAS A NEW FLAME COLORED LITTLE EVENING DRESS
AND IF WE HAD YOU I THINK THATS ALL SHE WOULD
ASK. HOLLY AND MISTLETOE IS SO LOVELY HERE
GREAT FRESH BUNCHES FOR FIFTY CENTS WE SENT
OFF TWO NICE THINGS THAT ARE GOING TO BRING
YOU LOTS OF LUCK WE THINK AND WISH FOR YOU
CONTINUALLY SURELY OUR LOVE WTJLL HAVE SOME
POWER TO HELP YOU OVER THESE BUMPS DEVOTEDLY

I think he refers to Hot Cha! in this one. It came
from Pittsburgh on February 23 and we had not seen
each other since May:

DARLING THE SHOW WENT FINE LAST NIGHT NO-
TICES ARE TERRIFIC BUT WE KNOW WHERE IT ISNT

232 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

RIGHT EVERYBODY WORKING NIGHT AND DAY TO GET
IT RIGHT FOR NEW YORK MARCH 8. SORRY MISSED
YOU ON PHONE LAST NIGHT I SUPPOSE WILL ROGERS
IS BACK TODAY AND WILL TELL YOU ALL ABOUT THE
SHOW. I THINK YOUR DRESS WILL BE SHIPPED TO-
MORROW ALL MY LOVE

On April 22 he wired me from Yonkers. I was at
Santa Monica:

MY DARLING YOURE NO DIFFERENT THAN ANY ONE
ELSE ONLY YOU DONT KEEP STUBS TO YOUR CHECK
BOOK. WHEN I LAY HERE ILL AS IVE BEEN YOU
CHANGE YOUR MIND AND COME TO CONCLUSIONS
NO MATTER HOW BAD THINGS ARE ITS GREAT TO BE
ALIVE AND I DONT KNOW HOW IM GOING TO GET
THROUGH. THINGS IN AMERICA ARE GETTING WORSE
AND WORSE BUT DONT WORRY ALL MY LOVE

In the next telegram Flo refers to the magnificent
radio show he put on for Chrysler Motors. Few people
realize today that Flo Ziegfeld was a pioneer in the
production of big radio shows and this was a very
big one indeed, worth about twenty-five thousand
dollars a week. I could listen to it at five o'clock on
Sunday afternoons from Santa Monica and it seemed
to me as Flo's voice came vibrantly over the air that
he was again on his feet and that all would be well:

GOOD MORNING DARLING I FELL ASLEEP LAST NIGHT
AND IT WAS TOO LATE TO CALL YOU WHEN I AWAK-

THE CRASH 233

ENED IM AFRAID WE WILL HAVE TO MAKE IT EVERY
OTHER NIGHT HEREAFTER THE WAY THINGS ARE BUT
I MISS SO TERRIBLY TALKING TO YOU AND PATTY.
EVERYBODYS RAVING ABOUT LAST NIGHTS RADIO
PROGRAM YOU MUST GET WITH ROGERS IMMEDI-
ATELY AND LET US KNOW IF YOU AND HE WDLL
HAVE AN IDEA FOR THE EIGHTH ALL MY LOVE

For his Chrysler Hour, Flo took Al Goodman,
then his musical director at the Follies, Jane Froman,
Art Jarrett and Jack Pearl, and put together a per-
fect show using music, scenes, and stars from his vari-
ous productions. He himself spoke for three minutes,
and although he was nervous at first, being a pro-
ducer, never before a performer, he soon began to
enjoy talking on the air. He set a standard for radio
equal to his standard for stage shows and he recog-
nized that radio was on its way to becoming the
greatest medium of entertainment outside the theater.

But his health was bothering him for the first time
in his life. He was trying to do a new show for the
Ziegfeld Theater, Hot Cha! was running, and his radio
rehearsals were long and arduous.

I should have been with him. I know that now. I
think I could have taken care of him. But I couldn't
get to him and he couldn't get to me. What started as
a bad cold during his radio experience wound up in
the end as pleurisy.

One night as I was listening in Santa Monica I
heard his voice falter. It was only a little break, un-
noticed by everybody else, but over three thousand

234 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

miles I caught the weariness and the sickness of it.
I hurried to find Homer Curran and I begged him to
close the play we were trying out.

I pay my everlasting tribute to Homer Curran. He
did not hesitate. He understood. He closed at once
and I was on my way to Flo.

George Cukor had come to see us work that week
and had asked me if I would be interested in doing
the part of the mother in his picture A Bill of Divorce-
ment, with John Barrymore and a new actress called
Katharine Hepburn. This was an offer straight from
Heaven, for the picture was not to start until sum-
mer. And so I met David O. Selznick, signed the con-
tract, and knew that I could go home, look after Flo,
and bring him back to California for a rest, free from
his creditors.

Having the picture to come back to meant that I
could keep my house and my faithful Mildred, who
looked after me, and that Flo could be comfortable.
And so, when I met him in New York and felt his
arms around me I thought that nothing could go
wrong ever again. But Flo was thinner and my heart
sank to see him walk. The elasticity was gone and
his broad shoulders were hunched and tired.

I realized that I must take over now. Still, there
were things to do, and there were moments when
Flo seemed all right. He opened the revival of Show
Boat, for instance, a theatrical chore that might have
exhausted a strong young man. And one evening we
saw Will Rogers' daughter Mary off for Europe. But
the evening we tried to be gay and went to the Penn-

THE CRASH 235

sylvania Hotel to hear Buddy Rogers' band, Flo col-
lapsed and had to have a room there for the night.
Buddy arranged this for us quietly and was fine and
wise in seeing that everything was done for us.

The Show Boat revival was a hit, but all the money
went to creditors. The theater, all the theater, was
dying that summer of 1932, and Flo was ill, mentally
exhausted as well as physically ill, and leaning on
persons for counsel whom he would have laughed at
in the old proud days.

Burkely Crest had lost its charm. It was still and
sad, like a house long neglected, like a home where
there is no more love. I realized what Flo had been
going through in his mock home with dozens, even
hundreds of people pecking at him every day, credi-
tors banging, and members of his staff scurrying back
and forth, each delivering a new crisis. One night I
put my hand on his wrist at the dinner table to feel
his pulse. It was beating alarmingly and erratically.
I called Dr. Wagner.

"Rest," was all Jerry could say. "That will do it.
Rest."

He might as well have said, "Find him a million
dollars."

The next morning I went into town by myself, got
my tickets and reservations, arranged with the rail-
road people for permission to take Flo onto the train
at Harmon, just above Hastings, and swore to secrecy
the few I could trust, like Alice Poole, who guarded
Flo's switchboard for so many years, and our own
faithful Sidney, Katheryn of Flo's office staff who

236 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

looked so competently after my secretarial chores,
and "Goldy," Flo's remarkable secretary

It was July and agonizingly hot. There was no cool-
ing system or air conditioning on the train. We tned
to comfort Flo with pillowcases packed with ice, but
it was almost useless. His nerves were shattered, and
he suffered from pleurisy and exhaustion. He was
half-conscious, writing with his fingers on the air, still
trying to dictate telegrams as we began our journey
to California.

We had evaded the reporters in New York and I
was able to take Flo from the train at Barstow, Cali-
fornia, so that no one knew that he was in a state
of collapse.

On the way out another blow fell. I received a
wire that Dan Curry, Flo's manager for many years,
had died. From then on, many important affairs were
in strange hands. But I could not tell Flo.

When Flo could talk, he worried about his enter-
prises. He wanted to be back in August for his Chrys-
ler show. His revival of Show Boat, everybody
thought, was more beautiful than the original, but as
business fell off that hot July he fretted himself sick
about the salary list. Mostly, Flo wanted to see Will
Rogers— but Will was in Europe.

Joe Schenck, one of the few who knew Flo's con-
dition, generously offered us his ranch as a rest home,
but Flo wanted to wait for Will. "He will tell us what
to do," he kept saying.

I took him first to Santa Monica and there, to the
last, we had fresh-cut flowers every day. I could do

THE CRASH 237

that, at least. Nothing wilted was ever allowed to stay
long enough for Flo to see it.

And Flo rallied for a while.

"Baby, I know it's expensive, but I do love to tele-
phone," he would say to me, and I would nod, and
he would make his long-distance calls. Most of them
cost about eighty dollars each, and our telegraph
bill for that month was six thousand dollars. I never
paid for anything so gladly.

Then, for the first time in my life, I interfered
with Flo's business. The Show Boat revival was be-
coming ruinous. There was a fortune in this magnif-
icent production, but the hot weather was beating
away business and we needed twelve thousand dol-
lars more a week for salaries. In this emergency I
called on A. C. Blumenthal, who had worked with
Flo before. He guaranteed the salaries and Show
Boat continued. But it was a bad summer.

Finally, as Flo grew weaker, I had a consultation
with two of the finest doctors in Los Angeles. They
advised taking Flo to a hospital for a complete
checkup, and this we did, one Sunday morning. In a
few days he seemed refreshed and relaxed. I took a
room at the hospital near him and began to work on
my picture.

18. GOOD NIGHT, SWEET PRINCE

A Bill of Divorcement had started a few days
before I brought Flo to California and so I had
work to do. Patty brought in flowers to the hospital
every day, fresh from our garden, Flo began to enjoy
the little delicacies we prepared for him at home,
the doctors said after a few days that all the poison
was out of his system, and we began to plan with him
all the things he wanted to do. George Cukor, a
blessed person, went about overcoming my nervous-
ness before the microphones— I had never spoken in
films before— and for this short while everything
seemed hopeful and all right.

I was frightened about the picture. I was afraid to
move away from the camera boom and wanted to
stand rooted wherever I was to speak my lines. John
Barrymore, a gallant man, crossed over whenever he
could so that I would not have to move. He was still
magnificent, acting brilliantly, not as he was a few
years later when, sick and tired but still struggling to
pay his debts, he had to resort to words written on
blackboards to remember his lines.

Miss Hepburn seemed a strange girl at first, with
her hair in a tight sausage and her schoolmarm
clothes; that is, until one day I saw her really act.

238

GOOD NIGHT, SWEET PRINCE 239

Somehow her eyes caught fire and there was a glow,
and I have seen ever since how beautiful she is.

Then I had a break. For a week or ten days,
George said, I would not be needed. I could devote
myself to Flo.

On the morning of July 22, 1932, I had breakfast
with Flo. Patty came in later with a lunch she had
prepared for us at home. All the strain and nervous-
ness were gone. I still lacked the courage to tell him
about A. C. Blumenthal and Show Boat, but it seemed
to me that he was almost ready to take charge again.
Still, I waited.

In the afternoon George called. He said he was
sorry to cut into my holiday but that I was needed at
the studio any time in the afternoon or evening I
preferred, to make a short test with a new actor who
was being considered for A Bill of Divorcement. I
asked for an evening test so that we might tuck Flo
in for the night. After dinner at his bedside I left for
the studio. It was the happiest day we had had to-
gether for a long, long time, and my heart was light.

At the studio I was made-up for my test with
Walter Pidgeon, who might have played the part of
the man I was supposed to marry in the picture. But
the test was interrupted and when the film was re-
sumed, Paul Cavanaugh was in the role. Walter, I
am sorry to say, had to wait several years before he
found the part which started his fine Hollywood
career.

We had rehearsed our scene and the camera was

240 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

grinding when George stopped the action and di-
rected me to a telephone. It was Sidney.

"What is wrong, Sidney?" I asked.

"Come quickly, madam, come quickly/' was all he
could say.

I met Sidney in the corridor outside Flo's room and
he told me.

"Madam, too late. He just died in my arms, walking
across the room. One short gasp was all. . . ."

I crumpled. I had arrived in all my studio make-up,
in a long dinner dress, with heavy mascara on my
eyes. I did not know anything until I found myself
on a bed with the nurses trying to get me out of the
dress, which for some reason had been sewn onto me.

Betty and Will Rogers, by a miracle, were there
and they took Patty and me to their ranch where we
stayed for two weeks until I could return to work
in my picture. Their love and the quiet of the hills
was strengthening, but I could not for a long time
shake off the illusion that if I could only run down
the world far enough, somehow I would find Flo
alive and waiting for me.

I do not know how I got through the picture, but
I know that it is good to have these compulsive things
to do in times of sorrow. And I shan't forget, ever,
the kindness and tactfulness shown to me by George,
by Jack Barrymore, Katie Hepburn, and by Ern
Westmore, the make-up expert, who started me on
my days those early mornings, dried my tears, and
gracefully said so little.

GOOD NIGHT, SWEET PRINCE 241

Sam Goldwyn immediately offered to provide a
private car if I wished to take Flo back to New York.
Flo had spoken, years before, of wishing his ashes
scattered over the Roof, his Roof, and it might have
been an appropriate gesture; but in the end I de-
cided upon a simple and inexpensive crypt in Forest
Lawn, hoping that someday I could provide a more
impressive resting place for him. But this I have
never been able to do, and the grave of the greatest
showman is the simplest, least notable of them all.
Only by little vases of fresh flowers twice a week,
which we have never failed to provide, can Pat and
I pay our tributes to this man who loved beauty so
passionately.

But I know that his memory shines on in the memo-
ries of beauty that he created. The standards he estab-
lished are respected and the heritage he left the
musical comedy world is still fresh and joyful. Could
there be a prouder boast in the theater than "I worked
for Ziegfeld"? And "Ziegfeldian" and "Glorified" are
words that Flo left as on a banner above his accom-
plishments.

If he left creditors, and he did, let us say that
their debts were partly lightened by the knowledge
that they were part of what went into creating a
legacy of the theater where there is no more thrilling
place in the world for talent and genius to lay an
offering.

Flo was buried by Will Rogers. "Flo loved me,"
he said. "Let me do this," and he did it, with dignity.
Possibly you recall what Will said in his column in

242 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

The New York Times the next day. I have always
treasured these lines: "Good-by, Flo, save a spot for
me. You tvill put on a show up there someday that
will knock their eye out."

I think that with all his fame, Flo has never been
given proper credit for two things in which he pio-
neered. It was he more than any other producer who
brought the loveliness of ballet into musical comedy.
One of his first attempts to do this was close to the
turn of the century when he presented Adeline Genee
in The Kiss Waltz, in which she performed ballet in
riding boots— a stunt, to be sure, but the forerunner
of the charming, Degas-like ballet scenes which Flo
later used so often in his musicals. He was also the
first, or one of the first, to recognize and to appre-
ciate the theatrical genius of the Negro race. Bert
Williams was his star at a time when no other man-
agers had promoted any Negro stars, and his pres-
entation of Negroes in Show Boat needs no emphasis
from me. Except this: Flo was as meticulous in his
care for his Negro players, including the least im-
portant girl or dancer, as he was with his most impor-
tant white stars. He provided fine dressing rooms for
them, costumed them beautifully, and lavished more
attention on them, it often seemed to me, than he
did on some of the others.

The things Flo cherished as a showman were color,
music, spectacle, and fun. I am sure that his great
talent was color, but his genius was his towering
ability to play one against the other, matching his

GOOD NIGHT, SWEET PRINCE 243

palette to his music, his comedy to his spectacle, stir-
ring and mixing the whole until he produced out of
utter conflict that unique work of art, a great musi-
cal comedy. No one, indeed, ever knew how he
accomplished it, for he went at his productions like
a painter who starts drawing at some unexpected
point, adding here, splashing color there, changing
his mind, erasing, making a bold stroke here— and
possibly entirely unable to explain in advance the
sum total effect that he felt and aspired to.

Flo's special taste, and his special skills in color,
music, and mass spectacle have always been clearly
understood, but his point of view about comedians
has been misrepresented. No producer before or since
ever developed so many funnymen or ever exploited
so many of them in so many shows to such advan-
tage; yet a curious legend persists. This is that Flo
hated comedians. It is still said in the bistros where
comics gather to spiel about old days that Flo used
his comedians merely as intervals in which the girls
changed their clothes.

This is untrue. The fact is, and I insist that I am
in the best position to know, that Flo loved his
comedians better than any other performers in his
productions. Actually, they were his most intimate
friends. Actually, he was more lavish in presenting
them, offering four top-name comics in productions
that could have been carried by one, than any other
manager. His close friends and the ones who loved
him best were Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, Bert Wil-
liams, Leon Errol, and Fannie Brice.

244 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

I remember when Will Rogers first started to work
for Flo on the Ziegfeld Roof. His act was a roping
act, a clever roping act, and that was all, not a word
spoken. But when Flo sat at his small table off to one
side, near the stage, Will could not resist talking to
him. He called him "Mister Zig Field," and he made
sly, sotto voce comments to him on prominent people
in the audience.

"Go on, say 'em out loud," Flo would urge him, but
Will would stammer and grin and twirl his rope, and
mutter, "Aw, Mr. Zig Field, they wouldn't think it
was funny."

It required several months before Flo had him
talking to audiences.

Flo never laughed at his comedians. He never
laughed much anyway. And certainly, being a pro-
fessional, he did not chuckle at Cantor and Fields and
Rogers and Errol and Fannie Brice any more, I sup-
pose, than Bob Hope howls today at Jack Benny.
But then I never saw Flo applaud the girls, either.

Will once told me that after he had made a success
in the Follies he told Betty, his wife, that he thought
Flo should give him a raise of $200 a week. They
debated whether he should dare approach the boss
about this, fearing that Will would get fired. Finally,
Flo sent for him.

"I won't mention money," Will said to Betty. "He's
going to bawl me out about something or other and
money is the last thing we'll talk about today."

Will appeared shyly at Flo's office and Flo opened
the conversation. "Will," he said, "the season starts

—

c

w

GOOD XIGHT, SWEET PREVCE 245

pretty soon, so I thought I'd better tell you I am going
to raise vour salary by a thousand dollars a week/'

Will couldn't sav anvthincr. He fumbled with his
hat and looked at the floor from under his forelock.

"Well, isn't that enough?" Flo asked. "Do you think
I ought to make it mort

Will says he turned and ran out of the door with-
out being able to say a word. But he added: "Vknow,
Billie. if Id stood there and stammered a minute
longer, I believe the ole boy might have give another
raise."

Flo found such comedians as Leon Errol and Fan-
nie Brice in vaudeville and save them their great
chance bv displaving them in the showcase of the
Follies. Of all the women who ever worked for him.
Fannie Brice was his best friend.

Once Fannie left the show to have a babv. Flo sent
for her and addressed her in what seemed like a tow-
ering rage, walking up and down his office.

"Of all people in the world. Fannie." he com-
plained, "for you to do a thing like this to me!"

It was lines like that, delivered with such a straight
face, that convince me that Flo himself was a come-
dian at heart.

Fannie's great triumph in the Follies was. of course.
the well-remembered "Mon Homme" ("Mv Man"
which she sang with such remarkable pathos. It «
one of Flo's pet numbers: he save it to her. showed
her how to sing it and costumed her for it.

Fannie was a lovely girl in those Follies days, with
a beautiful figure and wonderful hair, golden-chestnut

246 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

colored. She thought she ought to do the number in
an evening gown, with sophistication and polish.

Flo came out from the wings.

"This goes," he said, and ripped Fannie's beautiful
gown at the shoulder. "And this," tumbling her coif-
fure, and poor Fannie had to stand there and take it.

The result, as millions remember, was the tattered,
hole-in-the-stocking costume in which Fannie sang
her greatest song.

So much for song and comedy, spectacle and color.
I wanted to say these things in fairness to Flo, but
with a smile, as he would have liked it.

My father, Billy Burke, would have remembered
Will Shakespeare's lines from Venus and Adonis:

For him being dead, with him is

Beauty slain;
And Beauty dead, black chaos

Comes again.

19. AND NOW . . .

As I look about my small, compact house on quiet
. evenings when I am free from being that silly
woman in the movies or on the radio, I perceive that
I am somewhat overrun with elephants. There are
elephants in my library, elephants on my dressing
table, and there are two big old fellows, gleaming
white and about eighteen inches high, who live in
the garden and are accommodating about holding
flower pots. Some are of porcelain, some of china,
some of jade, silver, gold, or amber. They are all fat
and optimistic creatures with their snouts held high
for good luck.

The elephants were Flo Ziegfeld's and there was
not much else to save when he was gone, after all the
little people came and took things.

There were six lawsuits against the estate before
our tears were dry. They were complicated because
Flo's loans and agreements and plans were always
complicated, and I do not pretend to understand
them. All told, there were debts of a half million
dollars. These were paid off, eventually, through the
few resources we could lay hands on. Over the years
I have managed to contribute a hundred thousand
dollars. I wish it could be more.

In 1932 I was a small, bewildered comedienne

247

248 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

who for most of her life had been advised and pro-
tected, and often pampered. I had enjoyed more than
mere professional advice. I had had, in my mother,
in Charles Hawtrey, Charles Frohman, Victor Kiraly,
and in Flo himself, of course, not mere guidance but
loving guidance. Now for the first time I was on
my own.

But not entirely. There were Sam Goldwyn and
Will Rogers and George Cukor, and there was my
daughter. I think I should say a word about Pat here
in simple justice. By long odds, because of the tutors,
servants, private movie shows, elaborate playhouses,
and trips she had as a small girl, and because of the
compliments she received from celebrities as she was
growing up, Pat should have turned out a spoiled
brat. She did not at all, and I am still in awe of her.
She turned out red-headed but level-headed, forth-
right and good-humored. When our troubles came
she was sturdy and comforting beyond her years—
and she has been so ever since. There it is, Pat, dear.
You have been wondering all along when I would
say something to embarrass you, haven't you?

And Sam Goldwyn. I hope that Frances, who, I
hear, is doing a book about her husband, explains
him at long last, for Sam is a man of taste and imag-
ination and isn't understood by his contemporaries.
So many truly wonderful jokes have been made about
him and his cavalier disregard for the peculiar rules
of English grammar that his dedication to art and
to distinction is all too often ignored. I think that he
will agree with me when I suggest that much of his

AND NOW . . . 249

inspiration for perfection came from his association
with Flo. Flo was, after all, the first of the great
American showmen who demanded perfection re-
gardless of cost and regardless of whose heart broke
to attain it.

Sam said, "Billie, let me act as your agent and your
clearinghouse. I will get you parts in pictures and
look after you, and whether you are working or not
I will give you $300 a week so you won't have to
worry."

And so, with Sam's wisdom, George Cukor's pa-
tience and skill in handling me in my first picture,
Will and Betty Rogers' warm friendship, and Pat's
courage, we made out.

I have often been asked to explain why, in spite of
his financial debacle, there was not more of a legacy
from Flo. There was the Follies name, the picture
eventually made from his life story, and the great
Ziegfeld properties— Sally, Rosalie, Show Boat, and
so on— all of which eventually became successful
motion pictures. I am sure that no one will be inter-
ested in the details if I could explain them, which I
cannot, but as things turned out these things meant
very little financially to Pat and me.

The right to produce another Follies was legally
involved. I was able to buy Flo's interest, but Mr.
Erlanger's share was purchased by the Shuberts.
There were two productions eventually, the second
starring Milton Berle, but the season was too short.
I was severely criticized at the time for my presump-
tion in trying another Follies, but I am sure that Flo

250 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

would have wanted it like that; why wouldn't he
have wanted his name and his show to benefit his
wife and his daughter when they needed help? As a
matter of fact, it is my hope that ZiegfekTs daughter
may one day take her place as a producer. She has
the flair, the quick recognition of talent, and the
acumen. Who knows?

The Ziegfeld biography, produced by Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer as The Great Ziegfeld, netted us
very little, because it, too, was tied up in various
involvements of splits and shares and commissions,
but out of it came a welcome contract for me at
M.G.M. I was sorry for the final impression this pic-
ture left of Flo: it left him hopelessly ruined. Actu-
ally, although he was in difficulty at the time of his
death, it is certain that, with his radio show, with the
great properties he controlled, with the plans for
new shows that he had, and with Hollywood's reali-
zation that musical comedies were enormously profit-
able, Flo would have recovered and would have been
a greater showman than ever. That he missed this
chance was the real tragedy.

I could not control the motion picture rights to
Sally or Show Boat or any of the other Ziegfeld
productions. It would have taken a great deal of
money to hold those rights and I did not have this.
Eventually, great movies were made from them, but
I had no claim to the profits.

Now, of course, I know what I should have done.
I should have returned to Broadway. Disregarding
modesty for the moment, I think I can say that I had

AND NOW . . . 251

a name in New York, I know that I could have found
good plays and good producers, and I am reasonably
sure that I could again have been a star on the New
York stage. But New York with all its associations
was unthinkable. My immediate need was to make a
little money and to look after my daughter. I did
what I had to do at the moment, and who can say
that doing that is ever wrong?

Dinner at Eight was the plum that George next
dropped into my lap. He gave me a first picture
when I needed it, and he gave me my second. I am
one of many who say a little prayer every night for
George: I am sure that I have never known in any-
one a greater capacity for helping others help them-
selves, and he has brought so much of the best in
the theater to the best in the screen in his apprecia-
tion of what is beautiful.

Perhaps I can do him one small favor here and
now in a whit of recompense for his goodness to me.
His name is pronounced "Kew'-kor."

In my next picture as I went back to work as hard
as I could I was fortunate to be with Katie Hepburn
again. This film was Christopher Strong and was
directed by a remarkable person indeed, Dorothy
Arzner, the one woman director in Hollywood whose
great understanding and artistry added so much
luster to the names of Clara Bow, Ruth Chatterton,
Anna Sten, Sylvia Sidney, Rosalind Russell, and
many others when she first presented them on the
screen.

252 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

I moved quickly from pictures to a play, with a
revival of The Marquise, which Henry Duffy and
Matt Allen produced with David Burton, who did
the original in New York, as director, and with the
lovely Anita Louise playing the daughter. We had
Allan Mowbray as the Spaniard. We enjoyed hearty
success in Los Angeles, and followed this with a
delightful run in San Francisco where they also
appreciate Noel Coward.

By now Patty was in a good school, and because
she had begun to love California so much I kept
putting off the inevitable time when I should return
to New York and Broadway. I thought my daughter
should be attending school in the East, but she
formed strong friendships here, I was fortunate in
getting work, and I did not want to be far away from
her. That is why I am a Hollywood actress today. Do
you suppose that anybody, even the strongest per-
sonality with the firmest intentions and the most
logical ambitions, ever controls his destiny? I think
not. At any rate, I cannot say that at any given
moment in my life I ever seemed to have both hands
on mine.

And so I began to do my silly women. These
characters, these bird-witted ladies whom I have
characterized so often that I presume you know them
—how could you escape?— derive from my part in
The Vinegar Tree. I am neatly typed today, of course,
possibly irrevocably typed, although I sincerely hope
not, for I should like better parts. I could do better
parts better, for those were the roles that I was

AND NOW . . . 253

trained in— the gay but intelligent, well-written,
funny but believable roles that I had in The Mind
the Paint Girl, and in Jerry, and in Love Watches. I
should like to attempt to make those interesting
young women grow up. But if people will laugh at
my work and keep a sound roof over my head, who
am I to complain? And California, after all, is a
wonderful climate for geraniums and actresses.

In addition to the little comedies I did at Metro-
Goldwyn-Mayer I then made a number for Hal
Roach. Mr. Roach, who now pioneers in television
on film, was one of the most active people in the
world in those days too, in production, on the polo
field, and socially. I made the Topper pictures for
him with Roland Young, who was always dry and
fun to work with, and I had the joy of getting to
know, years before he became so famous, a shining
young man with a British accent who had just come
out from musical comedy. This was Cary Grant. An-
other youngster who was fine to watch was Clark
Gable, who had not yet moved out of gangster parts,
but I remarked at the time that he had a beautiful
head. Now, in some picture or other, Mr. Gable
picked me up and kissed me. I cannot tell you what
picture it was. All I recall is the deftness with which
young Mr. Gable could pick up a lady and kiss her.

Sometimes, on the Metro lot, something swift
would pass me by, I would feel a tingling, and look
around to see that it was Garbo, but I never met her,
only her shadow. Myrna Loy, Anna Nagle and
Norma Shearer were kind to me as I started again,

254 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

and so were Madeleine Carroll and Katharine Hep-
burn. Kindness is a great attribute, of course, but
great kindness in motion pictures is a special and
rare thing, difficult to find. Movie stars have so much
done for them, are hoisted to such uncontrollable
heights, are bowed to as infallible by so many, that it
is a wonder indeed when any one of them retains
kindness. Katie has it. The girls I have mentioned
have it. Ann Sothern, Fannie Brice and Greer Gar-
son possess it in rich, warm quantities. And just the
other day I found it when I was working in The
Barkleys of Broadway, in a new friend, Ginger
Rogers. But I have no complaint against any of
Hollywood. Everybody has been good to me here

Suddenly, as I went on with my picture work,
suddenly I realized that my small girl had grown
up. Suddenly, one day, to my astonishment and to
my chagrin, for all actresses in their hearts believe
they are only twenty-four, Patty was twenty-one
years old. She had been promised a coming-out party,
and she turned out to be a true Ziegfeld daughter
when she planned that party. All she wanted was
Hal Kemp's orchestra!

We had it. It cost a tidy penny, it scraped the
sugar bowl to pay for it, but I thought to myself,
A fine thing if Flo Ziegfeld's only daughter cant turn
twenty-one and present herself to society with cas-
cades of chrysanthemums and a first-rate band! So
we took over Victor Hugo's restaurant with our hun-
dreds of balloons and our orchestra and asked all our
friends and had ourselves a party. I know Flo would

AND NOW . . . 255

have liked it, only in his case, of course, he would
have considered nothing less than two bands.

By the time Patty was almost grown up there
arrived at my door, knocking hard, another oppor-
tunity. This was in the form of a play which Zoe
Akins had adapted from one of Mrs. Edith Wharton's
novels, and it was called The Old Maid. George
Cukor emphatically advised me to take the part. It
was a play with the kind of beauty and character in
it that I had always hoped to bring to the theater,
with whatever talents I had, and for a few weeks it
seemed that I might have the chance. It was planned
to open in Los Angeles. But when this was changed
to New York, at my old, beloved Empire, where I
first worked opposite Uncle Jack, my courage failed
me. I dared not take the risk, for it is always a
chanceful, expensive thing to leave your secure em-
ployment in the theater to undertake the adventure
of a new play, with its long weeks of rehearsal and
its problematical run. Alas, one must get used to
laying aside one's hopes and dreams; take up some-
thing made of tin instead of something made of gold,
not because one admires tin, but because tin is a
much more useful metal and does not hurt the eyes.
And so I turned down the play and went back to
trying to balance a feather on my nose.

But then, lest you think for a split moment that
this is a sad account, Hollywood is an easy place to
live in. I make my bow to the climate, even though
Ilka Chase did liken it to a blonde girl running in
and out of a Turkish bath, either too hot or too cold,

256 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

never able to make up its mind. Here there are
groups of people who can be gay, artistic, violent,
creative, trivial, serious, or kind; there are fine writ-
ers here, great musicians, producers, owners of fa-
mous horses, big ranches, mines, oil wells, fruit
ranches, cafe society that once graced the Cote
d'Azur— just about everything. If you can swim, you
can swim with this society. And I have learned to
swim.

A few years ago I began to be a radio actress as
well as an actress on the stage and on the screen. It
was an entirely new field, and I enjoy it. This began
when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had a program on
which I frequently worked when I was under con-
tract there. It was produced by a nice young man
who was, I thought, just a kid, but he was also a
good actor. I asked for him especially when I had
a skit to do in which I played a zany woman who
wanted the bookie to give her a horse that was
guaranteed to win. My young friend was bashful,
laughed off the idea, and so did not make his radio
debut with me. Not so long ago he found himself a
character named Archie and now you know him well
-Ed Gardner of Duffy's Tavern.

Another radio program gave me an opportunity
to work with Jack Barrymore. This was a show I think
will be long remembered, the wonderful nonsense
of the Rudy Vallee show when John Barrymore made
his last bid. At this time Jack was involved matrimo-
nially, he was miserably in debt, and his health was
failing rapidly. But he rose in the stirrups, so to speak,

AND NOW . . . 257

with all his grandeur and charm, and made fun of
himself on the air. I think this was the great lesson
which taught good actors that they can be amusing
at their own expense. Jack Barrymore did it gallantly.
ill as he was. because he was a man of honor who
wanted to meet his obligations. Few would have had
the skill or the wit to accomplish it.

Often I met him in the corridor at NBC. those
last days, with his thumbs in his belt, his coat over
his shoulders like a mantle, casting his sideways
glance. And for these moments vou could see again,
brieflw that he was still John Barrymore.

I did. finally, venture back to Xew York, some-
what timidly, with another Zoe Akins play. It should
have been a success; it had all the ingredients, but it
hadn't the spark, so let us leave it in peace and not
disturb it. After that quick failure I hurried back to
radio and pictures. I had. as you may remember, my
own morning show for quite a while, and I adored
that show as much as I admired the girl who wrote
it: Nancy Hamilton, who has since given the theater
many fine things. On the air I also talked about
Servel gas refrigerators and later about Listerine
tooth paste, both of which I still highly recommend.

Then came the Eddie Cantor radio shows which
are always so much pleasure to do. working with
the comedian Flo used to call his son. And now tele-
vision. I tried that only a few months ago and I
must sav I liked it. Obviouslv. it is the coming thing.
but whether it will replace motion pictures and the
stage is an argument I shan't enter. So far I have

258 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

been faithful to all the arts associated with acting
and I intend to remain faithful in this inclusive
fashion.

I think I could, without any trouble at all, recite
a complete list of all my plays and give most of the
casts, many of the playing dates— even to recalling
the college boys who battled in the audience when
I kicked off my red slippers in Jerry (are there any
staid middle-aging businessmen today who recall
whatever they did with Billie Burke's slippers?) —
but I go blank when I try to remember the pictures
I have done so far. There have been, I would reckon,
about forty. My favorite role was in The Wizard of
Oz, directed by the great Victor Fleming, in which
I played Glinda, the Good Fairy. I never played
such a being on stage, but this role is as close as I
have come in motion pictures to the kind of parts I
did in the theater.

I recall Ray Bolger in that film. He was the Scare-
crow. Day after day as the shooting went on I waited
for Ray to dance. Finally I asked him when.

"Dance?" he said, amazed. "Dance? Why, I'm
a professional dancer. That's what I do. I'm a
dancer. So of course I don't dance."

And he didn't. My parts in pictures have been
something like that.

But there were some good ones at that: She
Couldn't Take It, Girl Trouble, Doubting Thomas,
My American Wife, The Bride Wore Red, Merrily
We Live, Eternally Yours, Irene, Topper (a series),
Becky Sharpe, Everybody Sing, Forsaking All Others,

AND NOW . . . 259

The Man Who Came to Dinner. In This Our Life.
They All Kissed the Bride. Hi Diddle Diddle. Break-
fast in Hollywood, and The Cheaters. That seems to
be enough.

My home today is in West Los Angeles, a small
comfortable, compact house jam-packed with me-
mentos, especially elephants, pictures of actors and
actresses, Follies programs, hats and drums from
Ziegfeld productions, books about the theater and
—at last coimt— eight highly articulate canaries. I
look out from my sitting room on a small walled
garden behind which is a plavfield and a playhouse.
The playhouse is occupied bv large dogs, small dogs,
several cats, and three children.

Grandchildren!

They are Florenz. who is nine, Cecelia, who is
seven, and Bobbv. who is going-on-three, and they
are bv all possible odds the finest Ziegfeld produc-
tions yet. Pat with her husband and family live next
door to me. separated only by a garden gate. She is
married to a voung Virginian, an architect. William
Stephenson, who calls me "Billie" and picks me up.

It is a good life, a generous, happv life, though as
I look back to London and Charles Hawtrey. Broad-
way and Charles Frohman, Flo Ziegfeld and Burk-
elv Crest, I can see that there would have been
scant reason for predicting it would all turn out so
cozilv.

On clear moonlight nights I walk down the hill-
side that looks across the sea to Avalon over a span-
gled array of sparkling lights, like gold nuggets

260 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

dropped on a dark shawl, and I see the magic city of
Los Angeles. This is a golden city, with black gold
in its oil, star gold in its Hollywood, air-borne gold
on its vast flying fields; and it startles me to remem-
ber how I first saw it thirty years ago, when I made
pictures for Tom Ince, when the coastline was spat-
tered with small fishing shacks, and cattle grazed
where now we have traffic jams. I should like to
know for sure that those I love will grow up and find
it always free and bright and offering fulfillment.

And in the town off to the left, the town with the
country-village name of Hollywood, there are young-
sters coming along who will travel much the same
path I have traveled. They will know wealth, hap-
piness, heartaches, and they will lose dreams and
recapture dreams. Good luck to them! Let me say
this to them: "It's worth it, boys and girls."

This is as much philosophy as I feel up to. I'm a
busy woman, you know, with that feather to keep
balanced. My father Billy, I think, "did it with more
grace, but I do it more natural."

APPENDIX

You may easily skip the next few pages, but then— you
may find some old friends in these casts:

LONDON PERFORMANCES, 1903-1907

THE SCHOOL GZKL-Musical play by Henry Hamilton
and Paul Potter. Music by Leslie Stuart. Produced at the
Prince of Wales Theatre, London, May 9, 1903. Cast
included:

Edna May, Marie Studholm, Violet Cameron, Reginald
Somerville, G. P. Huntley, Billie Burke, George Graves,
Pauline Chase, Clarita Deval, Norma Whalley, Arthur
Roberts.

THE DUCHESS OF DAZVTZZC-Romantic light opera
in three acts by Henry Hamilton, by arrangement with
M. Sardou. Music by Ivan Caryll. Produced by Robert
Courtneidge at the Lyric Theatre, London, October 17,
1903. Cast:

Evie Greene, Clare Greet, Irene Edwards, Mea Winfred,
Monica Sayer, Marjory Gray, A. Marchand, E. Labare,
Pearl Hope, Lawrence Rea, Philip H. Bracy, Holbrook
Blinn, Denis O'Sullivan, A. J. Evelyn, Frank Greene,
Henry J. Ford, Barry Neame, Claude Dampier, Ford
Hamilton, Cecil Cameron, Nellie Souray, Kitty Gordon,
Violet Elliot, Adrienne Augarde, Rose Rosslyn, Billie
Burke.

THE BLUE MOOZV-Musical play by Harold Ellis and
Percy Greenbank. Music by Howard Talbot and Paul
Rubens. Produced by Robert Courtneidge at the Lyric
Theatre, London, August 28, 1905. Cast included:

261

262 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Florence Smithson, Courtice Pounds, Billie Burke, Walter
Passmore, Willie Edouin, Carrie Moore, Fred Allandale,
Harold Thorley, Clarence Blakiston, Eleanor Souray,
Ruth Saville.

THE BELLE OF MAYF A7R-Musical comedy by C. H.

Brookfield and Cosmo Hamilton. Lyrics by Leslie Stiles

and George Arthurs, music by Leslie Stuart. Produced

at the Vaudeville Theatre, London, April 11, 1906. Cast

included:

Louie Pounds, Courtice Pounds, Farren Soutar, Edna

May, Billie Burke, Camille Clifford.

MR. GEORGE-Comedy in three acts by Louis N.

Parker. Produced at the Vaudeville Theatre, London,

April 25, 1907. Cast included:

Billie Burke, Charles Hawtrey, O. B. Clarence, Alice

Russon.

MRS. PONDERBURTS PAST-Farcical comedy in three
acts by F. C. Burnand (from the French). Produced by
A. and S. Gatti at the Vaudeville Theatre, London, June
18, 1907. Cast:

Charles Hawtrey, Marie Illington, Billie Burke, Mona
Harrison, Ernest Graham, Edward Fitzgerald, Charles
Troode, Wilfred Draycott, Henri Laurent, L. Williams,
Percy R. Goodyer, Gwynne Herbert, Mirabel Hillier.

NEW YORK PERFORMANCES, 1907-1944

MY WIFE (129 perf.) -Comedy in four acts by Michael
Morton, from the French of Messrs. Gavault and Char-
nay. Produced by Charles Frohman at the Empire Thea-
tre, New York, August 31, 1907. Cast:
John Drew, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Walter Soderling,
Morton Selten, Albert Roccardi, Mario Majeroni, Axel
Bruun, Herbert Budd, Rex McDougall, E. Soldene
Powell, Frank Goldsmith, L. C. Howard, Billie Burke,

APPENDIX 263

Dorothy Tennant, Ida Greeley Smith, Hope Latham,
Kate Pattison Selten, May Galyer.

LOVE WATCHES (172 perf. ) -Comedy in four acts by
R. De Flers and G. De Caillavet, adapted by Gladys
Unger. Produced by Charles Frohman at the Lyceum
Theatre, New York, August 27, 1908. Cast:
Cyril Keightley, Ernest Lawford, W. H. Crompton,
Stanley Dark, Horace Porter, William Claire, William
Edgar, Billie Burke, Maude Odell, Kate Meek, Louise
Drew, Isabel West, Ida Greeley Smith, Anne Bradley,
Laura Clement, Maud Love, Charlotte Shelby.

MRS. DOT (72 perf .) -Comedy in three acts by W.
Somerset Maugham. Produced by Charles Frohman at
the Lyceum Theatre, New York, January 24, 1910. Cast:
Julian L'Estrange, Kate Meek, Fred Kerr, Anne Mere-
dith, A. Lionel Hogarth, Edgar MacGregor, Basil Hallam,
Billie Burke, Annie Esmond, Ernest Cossart, P. E. McCoy,
Mildred Barrett.

SUZANNE (64 perf.) -Comedy in three acts by Frantz
Fonson and Fernand Wicheler. Adapted by C. Haddon
Chambers. Produced by Charles Frohman at the Lyceum
Theatre, New York, December 26, 1910. Cast:
Julian L'Estrange, George W. Anson, Conway Tearle,
Billie Burke, Harry Harwood, David Glassford, C. Har-
rison Carter, C. J. Wedgewood, P. E. McCoy, G. H.
Beverman, E. R. Sheehy, M. B. Hendel, N. K. Leavitt,
Rosa Rand, Alison Skipworth and Jane Galbraith.

THE PHILOSOPHER IN THE APPLE ORCHARD
(35 perf. )— Play by E. Harcourt Williams from Anthony
Hope's story. Produced by Charles Frohman at the
Lyceum Theatre as a curtain raiser to Suzanne, begin-
ning January 20, 1911. Cast:
Billie Burke and Lumsden Hare.

THE RUNAWAY (64 perf .) -Comedy in four acts by
Pierre Veber and Henri De Gorsse. Adapted by Michael

264 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Morton. Produced by Charles Frohman at the Lyceum
Theatre, New York, October 9, 1911. Cast:
C. Aubrey Smith, George Howell, Henry Miller, Jr.,
Morton Selten, H. A. Cripps, Edwin Nicander, Harry
Barfoot, Emily Wakeman, Josephine Morse, Isabel West,
Jane Evans, Alice Gale, Aline McDermott, Roma De-
vonne, Adelaide Cumming, Lettie Ford and Billie Burke.

THE MIND-THE-PAINT GIRL (136 perf.) -Comedy in
four acts by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero. Produced by
Charles Frohman at the Lyceum Theatre, New York,
September 9, 1912. Cast:

William Raymond, H. E. Herbert, Edward Douglas,
John Morley, Arthur Fitzgerald, Barnett Parker, Bernard
Merefield, Arthur Luzzi, Jeanette Lowrie, Carroll Mc-
Comas, Edith Campbell, Hazel Leslie, Jeanne Shelby,
Anna Rose, Marie Fitzgerald, Morton Selten, Leo Coo-
per, David Hawthorne, Louis Massen, Kenneth Lee,
Cecil Newton, Erskholm E. Clive, Louis H. Geist, Billie
Burke, Mabel Frenyear, Ruth Boyce, Vera Mellish,
Jeanne Eagels, Lydia Rachel, Louise Reed, J. Palmer
Collins and Ernest W. Laceby. Staged by Dion G. Bou-
cicault.

THE AMAZONS (48 perf.) -Comedy in three acts by
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero. Revived by Charles Frohman
at the Empire Theatre, April 28, 1913. Cast:
Shelley Hull, Morton Selten, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Fritz
Williams, Thomas Reynolds, Arthur Fitzgerald, Dorothy
Lane, Barnett Parker, Annie Esmond, Miriam Clements,
Billie Burke, Lorena Atwood.

THE LAND OF PROMISE (76 perf.) -Play in four acts
by W. Somerset Maugham. Produced by Charles Froh-
man at the Lyceum Theatre, New York, December 25,
1913. Cast:

Billie Burke, Lumsden Hare, Lillian Kingsbury, Shelley
Hull, Norman Tharp, Thomas Reynolds, Barnett Parker,

APPENDIX 265

Marion Abbott, Henry Warwick, Gwladys Morris, Mil-
dred Orme, Leopold Lane and Selma Hall.

JERRY (41 perf.)-Play in three acts by Catherine Chis-
holm Cushing. Produced by Charles Frohman at the
Lyceum Theatre, New York, March 28, 1914. Cast:
Gladys Hanson, Billie Burke, Allan Pollock, Thomas
Reynolds, Alice John, Shelley Hull, Lumsden Hare,
Bernard Thornton.

THE RESCUING ANGEL (32 perf.)-Play in three acts
by Clare Kummer. Produced by Florenz Ziegfeld and
Arthur Hopkins at the Hudson Theatre, New York, Octo-
ber 8, 1917. Cast:

Billie Burke, Claude Gillingwater, Marie Wainwright,
Elmer Brown, Walter Schellin, Dana Desboro, Robert
McWade, Richard Barbee, Roland Young, Frederick
Perry and Rhoda Beresford.

A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE (53 perf.) -Com-
edy in four acts by Alexandre Dumas. Adapted by Syd-
ney Grundy. Revived at the Henry Miller Theatre, New
York, May 1, 1918. Cast:

Henry Miller, Billie Burke, Lowell Sherman, Lucille
Watson, Frank Kemble Cooper, Frederick Lloyd, Lewis
Sealy and Lynn Hammond.

CAESAR'S WIFE (81 perf.) -A drama in three acts by
W. Somerset Maugham, produced by Florenz Ziegfeld,
Jr., at the Liberty Theatre, New York, November 24,
1919. Cast:

Norman Trevor, Ernest Glendenning, Harry Green, T.
Wigney Percyval, Frederic DeBelleville, Margaret Dale,
Hilda Spong, Mrs. Tom A. Wise, Billie Burke.

INTIMATE STRANGERS (91 perf.) -A comedy in three
acts by Booth Tarkington, produced by Florenz Zieg-
feld, A. L. Erlanger and Charles Dillingham, at the
Henry Miller Theatre, New York, November 7, 1921.
Cast:

266 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Charles Abbe, Alfred Lunt, Billie Burke, Frances How-
ard, Glenn Hunter, Frank J. Kirk, Elizabeth Patterson,
Clare Weldon.

ROSE BRIAR (88 perf.)-A comedy in three acts by
Booth Tarkington. Produced by Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., at
the Empire Theatre, New York, December 25, 1922. Cast:
Billie Burke, Allan Dinehart, Frank Conroy, Julia Hoyt,
Richie Ling, Paul Doucet, Florence O'Denishawn, Ethel
Remey, Louis Darclee, Mark Haight, Frank McCoy.

ANNIE DEAR (103 perf.) -Musical comedy in three
acts. Book, music and lyrics by Clare Kummer. Produced
by Florenz Ziegfeld at the Times Square Theatre, New
York, November 4, 1924. Cast:

John Byam, May Vokes, Florentine Gosnova, Edward
Allan, Ernest Truex, Bobby Watson, Billie Burke, Spen-
cer Bentley, Phyllis Cleveland, Mary Lawler, Jack Whit-
ing, Alexander Gray, Spencer Charters, Gavin Gordon,
Frank Kingdon, Marion Green, Marjorie Peterson.

THE MARQUISE (80 perf.) -Play in three acts by Noel
Coward. Produced by Kenneth MacGowan and Sidney
Ross at the Biltmore Theatre, New York, November 14,
1927. Cast:

Arthur Byron, Madge Evans, Theodore St. John, Regi-
nald Owen, Rex O'Malley, Harry Lillford, Billie Burke,
Dorothy Tree, William Kershaw.

THE HAPPY HUSBAND (46 perf.) -Comedy in three
acts by Harrison Owen. Produced by Gilbert Miller at
the Empire Theatre, New York, May 7, 1928. Cast:
Billie Burke, A. E. Matthews, Lawrence Grossmith, Irene
Browne, Walter Connolly, George Thorpe, John Wil-
liams, Ilka Chase, Mackenzie Ward, Nancy Ryan, Alice
Moffat.

FAMILY AFFAIRS (7 perf.) -Comedy in three acts by
Earle Crooker and Lowell Brentano. Produced by Arthur

APPENDIX 267

Hopkins and L. Lawrence Weber at the Maxine Elliott
Theatre, New York, December 10, 1929. Cast:
Joseph McCallion, Elaine Temple, Cecil Clovelly, Frank
Elliot, Billie Burke, Edmund George, Leona Boutelle,
Audrey Ridgwell, Bruce Evans.

THE TRUTH GAME (107 perf.)-A comedy in three
acts by Ivor Novello. Produced by Lee Shubert at the
Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York, December 27, 1930.
Cast:

Phoebe Foster, Ivor Novello, Gerald McCarthy, Gwen
Day Burroughs, Billie Burke, Burton McEvilly, Jean
Fullarton, Dorothie Bigelow, Viola Tree, Albert Garcia
Andrews, Forbes Dawson.

THIS ROCK (37 perf. ) -Comedy in three acts by Walter
Livingstone Faust Produced by Eddie Dowling at the
Longacre Theatre, New York, Feb. 18, 1943. Cast:
Harlan Stone, Joyce Van Patten, Joan Sheppard, Zachary
Scott, Alastair Kyle, Roland Hogue, Jane Sterling, Billie
Burke, Nicholas Joy, Everett Ripley, Lucia Victor, Ethel
Morrison, Malcolm Dunn, Gene Lyons, John Farrel, Ma-
bel Taylor, Victor Beecroft, Lorna Lynn, Gerald Mat-
thews, Suzanne Johnston, Louis Volkman, Patsy Flicker,
Buddy Millard, Dickie Millard, Richard Leone.

MRS. JANUARY AND MR. X (43 perf.)-Comedy in
three acts by Zoe Akins. Produced by Richard Meyers
at the Belasco Theatre, New York, March 31, 1944. Cast:
Helen Carew, Edward Nannary, Phil Sheridan, Billie
Burke, Frank Craven, Roderick Winchell, Robert F. Si-
mon, Mile. Therese Quadri, Barbara Bel Geddes, Bobby
Perez, Henry Barnard, Henry Vincent, Dorothy Lambert,
Nicholas Joy, Susana Garnett.

268 WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

CALIFORNIA PERFORMANCES, 1931 and 1934

THE VINEGAR TREE-Play in three acts by Paul Os-
borne. Produced by David Belasco and Homer Curran
at the Belasco Theatre, Los Angeles, June, 1931. Cast:
Billie Burke, Warren William, William Morris, William
Janney, Fulie Dillon and Dorothy Blackburn.

THE MAD HOPES-A comedy by Romney Brent. Pro-
duced in Los Angeles, 1931.

HIS MASTER'S VOZCE-Play in three acts by Ivy Low.
Produced at the El Capitan Theatre, Hollywood, 1934.

PERFORMANCES ON TOUR, 1932 and 1941:

THE MARQUISE-Toured in California, 1932. Cast;
Alan Mowbray, William Stack, Billie Burke, Anita Louise,
Morgan Farley, Reginald Sheffield, Herbert Bunston,
Cyril Delevanti, Virginia Howard.

THE VINEGAR TREE-On tour, 1941.

INDEX

Adams, Maude, 37, 54, 55, 62,

63ff, 83, 86
Alans, Zoe, 255, 257
Amazons, The, 114-115
Annie Dear, 201
Arliss, George, 86, 195

Bailev, J. A., 8, 9

Bamum, P. T., 7, 8

Barrie, Sir James M., 36, 62-65.

66, 109-110, 133
Bam-more, Ethel, 1-2, 48, 53,

54, 55
Barrvmore, John, 54, 78, 219,

234, 238, 240, 256-257
Barrvmore, Lionel, 195, 219
Beattv, Mrs. Cecelia Flood, 9-11
Belasco, David, 56, 61, 98, 100.

225 ■
Belle of Maijfair, The, 37-39
Berlin, Irving, 174, 183, 186-

187, 196-197, 215
Bill of Divorcement, A, 234
Blue Moon, 37
Blumenthal, A. C, 237, 239
Boland, Mary, 55, 86, 225
Bolger, Ray/ 258
Boucicault,' Dion, 37, 112-113,

114
Bradleys, 214ff, 219
Bradv, Diamond Jim, 157
Brice, Fannie, 119, 151, 159.

243. 244. 245-246. 254
Bromfield, Louis, 218
Buck, Gene, 165-166
Burke, Billv, 3-9, 11-12, 14-15,

16, 18-20, 22, 44, 84, 148,
246, 260
Burke, Blanche Beattv (Mrs.
Billv), 8-9, 11, 16-18, 19, 22-

25. '36-37. 49. 76-77. 90ff, 95-
96, 122-123, 130-131, 132,
202-203, 248

Caesar's Wife, 201
Caillavet, G., 85, 95
Caillavet, Mme., 95
Cameron, Violet, 27
Campbell, Mrs. Patrick, 60, 83,

86
Cantor, Eddie, 151. 159. 177.

178, 223, 243. 244. 257
Carlisle, Alexandra, 34, 35
Carnegie, Dale, 55
Carrero, Liane, 141, 143, 144
Carrero, Maximo, 141
Carroll, Madeleine, 254
Caruso, Enrico, 103-105, 148
Chase, Pauline, 27, 37
Chatterton, Ruth, 192, 194-195.

251
Choate, Joseph H., 78-79
Churchill, Winston, 97
Clements, Miriam, 115
Clowns: the Babusios, 7; Du-

row, 7; Al Miaco, 6; William

Olschansky, 7; Tonv Pastor,

6: Dan Rice, 5; Sherwood, 7
Collier, Constance, 105, 219,

225
Cooch Behar, Maharajah of, 30
Coward, Noel, 218, 252

269

270

WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Cukor George, 234, 238ff, 248,

249, 251, 255
Curran, Homer, 225, 234
Curry, Dan, 236
Cushing, Catherine Chisholm,

116

Dale, Alan, 75
Dazian, Henry, 157
Dillingham, Charles, 174, 177,

180, 185, 186, 197, 212
Dinner At Eight, 251
Drew, John, 1-2, 13, 48ff, 76,

78-79, 86, 255
Duchess of Dantzic, 37-38

Eagels, Jeanne, 111, 195
Edwardes, George, 26ff, 111
Eilers, Sally, 218
Elliott, Maxine, 54, 83, 92, 97-

100, 117
Empire Theater, 1, 52, 56, 57,

65, 67, 255
Erlanger, A. L., 98, 220, 249
Errol, Leon, 174, 177, 241, 244,

245

Faversham, Julia & William, 70
Fields, W. C, 159, 177, 244
Fiske, Minnie Maddern, 55, 73,

83,87
Fitch, Clyde, 109
Flers, R. de, 85, 95
Follies of 1918, 196-197
Follies of 1919, 196
Fontanne, Lynn, 198-200
Forbes-Robertson, Sir Johnston,

97, 117
Friml, Rudolph, 187
Frohman, Charles, 1-2, 27-28,
35-36, 44-45, 47, 48-49, 53ff,
57ff, 68, 79, 80, 88, 94, 97ff,
103, 109-110, 112, 113, 114-
116, 124, 125, 126-129, 130,
132, 133, 162, 169, 248, 259

Frohman, Daniel, 51, 57, 71

Gable, Clark, 253
Garden, Mary, 70-71
Gardner, Ed, 256
Garson, Greer, 254
Gatti Brothers, 38-39, 42
Genee, Adeline, 242
Gershwin, George, 187
Gillette, William, 53-54, 68-69
Goldwyn, Samuel, 167, 217,

241, 248-249
Goldwyn, Mrs. Samuel (see

Howard, Frances)
Grant, Cary, 253
Great Ziegfeld, The, 250

Hallam, Basil, 105-106
Hamilton, Nancy, 257
Hammerstein, Oscar, 56, 140
Hammond, Percy, 75
Happy Husbands, 207
Harkrider, Jack, 217
Hawtrey, Sir Charles, 39-43, 45-

47, 48, 113, 148, 248, 259
Hayman, Alf, 99-100, 126-129,

164, 167ff
Hayward, Madame, 79-80, 89,

97, 105
Held, Anna, 120, 127, 139-145,

163
Hepburn, Katharine, 234, 238-

239, 240, 251, 254
Howard, Frances (Mrs. Samuel

Goldwyn), 197-198, 248
Hull, Josephine, 111
Hull, Shelley, 111, 115
Huntley, George P., 27

Ince, Thomas H., 166ff, 260
Intimate Strangers, The, 197-
200, 202, 209

Jerry, 116, 146, 16lff, 253, 258

INDEX

271

Keightley, Cyril, 87-88
Kem, Jerome, 115, 200, 218
Kerr, Frederick, 105, 106-107
Kingston, Mr. & Mrs. Beatty,

20-21
Kiraly, Victor, 117, 119, 248
Kirshbaum, Rev. Samuel, 3, 12-

13

Land of Promise, The, 115-116,

122
Lasky, Jesse L., 166-167, 192
Lawford, Ernest, 85, 88
L'Estrange, Julian, 105
Lindsay, Howard, 55
Lorraine, Lillian, 117, 120, 127,

142, 163, 174, 212
Love Watches, 83ff, 101, 103,

253
Loy, Myrna, 253
Lunt, Alfred, 197, 198-200
Lupinos, The, 6

McAvoy, J. P., 179-180

Malone, Pat, 28, 35

Marquise, The, 105, 207, 218;

revival, 252
Marriage of Convenience, 192,

194-195
Martin, Frederick Townsend,

71-72, 148
Maugham, Somerset, 36, 86,

101, 107-108, 115ff, 148, 201
May, Edna, 27-28, 30, 35, 36,

37-38
Mayer, Louis B., 218
Miller, Gilbert, 205
Miller, Henry, 192, 194-195
Miller, Marilyn, 175-176, 196,

208-212, 214
Mind The Paint Girl, The, 61,

101, 110-111, 113, 114, 253
Mrs. Dot, 101, 107-108
Mrs. Ponderhurys Past, 45-47

Mr. George, 40ff

My Wife, 45, 47, 48ff, 76

Nagle, Anna, 253
Nathan, George Jean, 65
Novello, Ivor, 219, 225

Old Maid, The, 255

Palmer, A. N., 63-64
Patti, Adelina, 21
Pinero, Sir Arthur Wing, 36,
101

Rescuing Angel, The, 201

Roach, Hal, 253

Rogers, Betty (Mrs. Will), 240,

244, 249
Rogers, Ginger, 254
Rogers, Will, 159, 177-178, 218,

225, 236, 240, 241-242, 243,

244-245, 248, 249
Rose Briar, 197, 200
Rousel, Mr. & Mrs. Theodore,

21-22
Russell, Lillian, 83, 86, 143

Sandow, Eugene, 138-139, 143,

148
Schenck, Joe, 236
School Girl, The, 26-36
Sherry's, 72
Selten, Morton, 53
Selznick, David O., 234
Seymour, Willie, 48, 49, 53
Shaw, George Bernard, 62, 207
Shearer, Norma, 217, 253
Sheldon, Edward, 86-87, 96
Shubert, Jake, 98ff, 142, 249
Shubert, Lee, 97ff, 142, 249
Skinner, Otis, 7, 54
Sobel, Bernard, 204
Sothern, Ann, 254
Sothern, E. H., 54, 78
Steger, Julius, 141-142

272

WITH A FEATHER ON MY NOSE

Stephenson, William, 259
Stewart, Leslie, 26ff, 34
Studholm, Marie, 27-28
Sutro, Alfred, 112

Tarkington, Booth, 197-198,

200, 209
Tempest, Marie, 105, 108
Thomas, Olive, 172, 173, 177,

208, 212
Tree, Sir Herbert Beerbohm, 65
Truth Game, The, 207, 219,

224, 225
Twain, Mark, 68, 69-71

Urban, Joseph, 159, 182, 218

Vinegar Tree, The, 224ff, 252

Wagner, Dr. Jerome, 188, 235
Westmore, Ern, 240
Williams, Bert, 119, 163, 242,

243
Wizard of Oz, The, 258

Young, Roland, 253

Ziegfeld, Dr. Florenz, 132, 135,
136-137, 161

Ziegfeld, Florenz Jr., birth, 135;
boyhood, 135-136; early the-
atrical ventures, 136-139;
physical appearance, 118,

148-150, 203; and Anna
Held, 139-145; first Follies,
145; and Billie Burke: meet-
ing, 117-120; courtship, 121ff;
marriage, 130-132; honey-
moon, 132; and Blanche
Burke, 122-123, 130, 202; as
host, 182-183; and animals,
153-154, 159, 179-181; and
ballet, 242; and Negro artists,
242; at Camp Patricia, 184-
191; work in Hollywood, 217;
and Marilyn Miller, 175-176,
208-211; and Olive Thomas,
172-173; gambling losses,
143, 214-216, 219; stock mar-
ket crash, 220ff; telegrams of,
204, 226-233; radio produc-
tions, 232-234; illness, 234ff;
death, 240; Will Roger's trib-
ute, 241-242;

56, 74, 87, 100, 118ff, 133,
134ff, 146-160, 161ff, 195,
200-201, 204-206, 207ff, 213,
242-246, 247ff, 254-255, 259

Ziegfeld, Patricia Burke, 174,
177, 178, 180, 185-186, 188-
191, 202, 209, 211, 212, 224,
226ff, 238ff, 248, 249, 250,
252, 254-255

Ziegfeld, Rosalie de Hez (Mrs.
Florenz, Sr.), 132, 135, 136,
161-162

Zimmerman, Freddie, 118, 143